Take Me Where I Cannot Stand
by WastelandRose
Summary: Louisa Agnes Serenity Washburne hated her name... a miniseries about the life of Zoe and Wash's daughter. my first attempt at Firefly fanfic so reviews are appreciated. sequel 'Destiny' is now posted.
1. Part 1: Keep Flying

Part 1 - Keep Flying.

Louisa Agnes Serenity Washburne hated her name.

It was too long, for starters, and the girl was sure it would have taken her well into her teens to memorize the whole thing if it hadn't been for her mama screamin' it at her all the time--"Louisa Agnes Serenity Washburne! Get down from there!" "Louisa Agnes Serenity Washburne! What have I told you about playing on that thresher?" "Louisa Agnes Serenity Washburne! Gorramit! Not again!"

She went by Lou. Or Louie. Anyone not her mama called her Lou or Louie. Once, Caleb Tao from her class at school tried calling her Lou-Lou. He had an awful hard time trying again, what with his nose blood leakin' into his big fat mouth and all.

Louisa lived with her mama on Qilin. It was a tiny little border moon on the very outskirts of the very edge of the rim, prosperous and almost fully self-contained. Folk on Qilin didn't need nothin' from no one, 'specially not the Alliance. Purple-bellies weren't welcome on Qilin and they ruttin' well knew it.

Louisa's mama practically ran the whole moon; everyone called her Sheriff, but her office was more akin to that of law enforcement, forewoman, and mayor all rolled into one. When Zoe Alleyne Washburne first arrived on Qilin, a baby on her hip and a whole helluva lot of crying yet to be done, the place had been in a state of near anarchic chaos. Her and Louisa's aunts and uncles was who cleaned out the bad folk. It was just a job--a real well-payin' one, Uncle Jayne would insist fondly--but the people on Qilin still loved them for it. Louisa's mama fell in love with the sleepy moon and decided that it was where she should raise her daughter.

She was a strong woman, proud and near-Amazonian in stature, with dark eyes that betrayed a deep hurt her placid brown face never seemed to show. Louisa sometimes wished she would've ended up as pretty as her mama, but instead everyone said she took after her daddy. She had his long nose, his quirky smile, his soft blue eyes, and a whole mass of ruttin' uncooperative red-gold curls swirling tight around her bronzed and freckled face. She didn't really like looking like her daddy. Sometimes seeing him in Louisa was all it would take for her mama to have to go have a cry.

Louisa never knew her daddy. Mama said he'd been killed before she was born. It was the Alliance's fault but the Reavers that done it. Louisa didn't like thinking about Reavers. Once when she was six, she overheard some of the older kids telling campfire stories about Reavers. They'd made the mistake of telling 'em while her mama was passing by on her way home.

"If you're gonna be tellin' tales," She stated, slinking up quietly and scaring the daylights out of the inhabitants of the campfire glow, "Then you best at least be tellin' truthful ones... you really wanna know about Reavers?"

Her voice was eerie. From the hiding spot she held high overhead in the gum tree, Louisa could remember getting an awful shiver. The darkness all around seemed to rush in just a little closer, the humid air putting a strain on the girl's little lungs.

"Uh... ya, Sheriff," Frankie Murphy stated, trying to hide just how spooked her unnoticed entry and all around demeanor of ghostliness had gotten him, "You ever see Reavers when you was out explorin' the 'Verse?" He didn't really believe they were real; he was just trying to get Annabelle Waters scared enough so's she'd let him walk her home. The boy really had it bad.

Zoe gave a stoic nod, slowly lowering herself onto a free seat on one of the rotting fallen tree trunks that were being felled to make farmland. Her stony face was all in shadow. "Sure have," She stated, meeting all the half-dozen teenagers' gazes at once around the tight circle, "You know about Miranda. They teach you in school. Reavers used to be men from that planet until the Alliance pumped the Pax into their air processors. Now... now they're something else. Reaver's don't got nothin' in 'em but rage, hate, _need_..."

She leaned in a little closer, back ramrod straight as ever as she went on, "They ain't men. They've forgotten how to be... they take their ships from the folks they kill. You can tell a Reaver ship by the blood painted on 'em and by the scores of burnt up bodies chained to the hulls. Reaver ships run hot, with their core containment leaking or just not on. Makes 'em all kinds 'a scary fast, even if the radiation does tend to mutate and scar the Reavers inside."

Louisa had always known Reavers were real--Uncle Jayne was who told her but he wouldn't tell her much--but her mama would never talk to her about 'em at all, 'specially not like this, like she wanted the group of young kids to be afraid. Louisa was suddenly afraid.

"Reavers catch you," The tall woman went on, calm and cool even while her dark eyes spat fire and the teenagers quivered with terror, "Then you oughta get to killing yourself quick and painless before they get to raping you to death. It's a horrible way to go, getting raped, flayed, eaten, watching your own skin sewed into a coat or pair of blood-soaked britches, all while you're still alive to feel it... still prayin' and screamin' for it to stop."

And then, right as Louisa's mama was talking about the screamin', the girl heard a bit of movement right beside her on the branch she was sat on. She turned and screamed herself when she saw a big pair of bloody red eyes shining right at her in the dark.

Everything was a bit of a blur after that, but Louisa woke up home in her bed. Uncle Simon was there, wrapping her aching left wrist in plaster bandages as he whined about how fiberglass would've been better but he hadn't come across any in a long while. Louisa was embarrassed to hear her mama tell her how she'd fallen out of the tree and broken her arm, about how it had only been a nagapie, one of the little night monkeys that infested the entire moon, that had frightened her.

She also felt real guilty about the sadness in her mama's eyes as the mournful woman had tenderly petted her matted hair and scolded her for spying on the story she wasn't near old enough to hear.

_Serenity_'s crew stayed visiting for awhile after that, so Louisa figured that breaking her arm wasn't all bad. Auntie Kaylee decorated her cast real pretty like, with glued on ribbons and glitter, and Aunt River claimed the underside of it to paint on a dead perfect picture of a nagapie looking like it was clinging to the girl's arm. Aunt River's nagapie was a lot less scary than the one in the tree, the dark haired young woman muttering something about making sure the budding leaf only had the right fears as she painted.

Louisa remembered Aunt Inara and Uncle Mal talking to her mama in the next room, remembered how her mama smiled big and hugged Aunt Inara after the fancy woman had put her hands over a bump that didn't used to be there on her stomach. When she asked what it was about, Uncle Simon explained that Aunt Inara and Uncle Mal were gonna have a baby, a little cousin for her. Ignoring Aunt River's whispered "two sides of the same coin," Louisa frowned in confusion and asked him how a bump could mean a baby. He'd turned red and spluttered that she should ask her mother.

She'd asked Uncle Jayne instead 'cuz he was more like to actually tell her the truth, no matter that she was little. And he had told her, letting the girl sit on his knee while he laughed about how Aunt Inara and Uncle Mal had been sexin' like bunny rabbits and it was inev'table that they'd pop out a brat at the rate they was goin'. Louisa didn't quite understand but laughed with him, grateful that someone talked to her like she was an equal instead of a dumb kid, even if Aunt River said that was just 'cuz Uncle Jayne had the mind of a child so they were about even anyways.

Uncle Jayne didn't much like that, the great big man growling with mock anger about the "ruttin' moonbrain" before he took off after her, chasing the lithe woman outside and off into the thick tropical trees in the distance. They were gone a long while and when her mama finally saw fit to wonder aloud as to where they'd gotten, Louisa smartly proclaimed, "Prolly sexin' like bunny rabbits." She and Uncle Jayne got their mouths scrubbed out with detergent powder and the girl learned that words she heard from the big man were best not said in the presence of her mama.

_Serenity_ was Uncle Mal's ship. She was a 03-K64 Firefly class mid-bulk transport vessel and she was the prettiest boat in the 'Verse. Uncle Mal was the captain; he was in charge or liked to bitch about how he was supposed to be but no one ruttin' well listened to him. Aunt Inara was the ambassador, which mostly just meant she always got the job of talking to the fancified folks so Uncle Mal and Uncle Jayne wouldn't start no unnecessary fights. She was also married to Uncle Mal and Uncle Jayne said she'd used to be a Companion; Louisa didn't understand most of what a Companion was, but always thought it must've been some kind of princess from the nice clothes and airs Aunt Inara had on all the time.

Uncle Jayne was the merc, which meant he got to carry a gun and look scary and shoot people. He was real fond of his job. Auntie Kaylee was the mechanic and Uncle Simon was the doctor; everyone said they were the absolute best at what they did, top three percent and what not. Aunt River was the pilot. Aunt River was also the _feng le_ mind-readin' genius assassin, but Louisa thought that the only one of those that really stuck was the genius part. Aunt River was odd, but not _feng le_; she was real nice and the smartest person Louisa knew besides her mama.

Louisa really loved it when _Serenity_ visited Qilin. Her and her crew were always around every couple months bringing in supplies and sometimes picking up surplus crops to deliver off world. They always came with presents for Louisa, and lots of exciting stories about crime and gunplay and narrow escapes. Sometimes, they came wearing bandages stained with blood. She didn't like those times so much but her mama told her that gettin' shot was just a part of bein' on Uncle Mal's crew and she shouldn't worry too much 'cuz worrying wouldn't do no good anyways. She asked her mama if she worried about Uncle Mal and the crew. The woman had quietly replied, "Every ruttin' second."

Louisa's mama used to be _Serenity_'s first mate until Louisa's daddy, the former pilot, had been killed by the Alliance and the Reavers and she'd decided she couldn't raise her daughter on a ship where gettin' shot was part of the job description. Louisa really wished her daddy hadn't died. If he hadn't, he'd still be the pilot and her mama would still be the first mate and they'd prolly all still be living on board getting to have great adventures all through the 'Verse. While the girl liked Qilin well enough, it was pretty gorram boring on the sticky little moon. For as long back as she could remember, Louisa had had a strong desire to get herself out into the Black, to fly and fight and see everything there was to see in the whole 'Verse just 'cuz it was there and needed seein'.

The twiggy little girl was thirteen before she even broken Qilin's atmo. When that time finally came, she was tryin' so hard to keep herself from cryin' that her head hurt and wishin' like hell she could just run home to her mama. She wished she hadn't wished so hard for the cause to leave Qilin 'cuz gettin' that wish had cost her a helluva lot more than she'd been willing to part with.

It happened a week before her birthday. She noticed over breakfast that her mama's face was a little flushed. She didn't think too much on it, kissing her cheek and chirping "_wo ai ni_, mama" before heading off to school. By the time she got home that afternoon, there was already nothing anyone could do for Zoe. Even if Uncle Simon had been able to make the week long trip to Qilin in the blink of an eye, no one could've saved her mama from the fever sickness. She died a few hours later. Gone. Just like that at only the age of forty-eight. The whole next week passed like a waking nightmare, like it wasn't even real and Louisa was just waiting patiently for herself to wake up.

The situation sunk in when Uncle Mal came stomping as quiet as he could manage into her room. His face looked so old and sad and Louisa knew it was all true. She'd been hoping it wasn't but it was and she wordlessly began to pack her belongings. Louisa might've looked more like her daddy, there might've been glimpses of his happy and odd personality in her--inappropriate jokes, amusing nonsequitors, and a fondness for plastic dinosaurs that would never leave her--but she was her mother's daughter; she kept her hurt inside.

And she was hurt. She was hurt and angry and didn't just have no way to let it out; she had no one and nothing to direct her hurt and anger towards. She couldn't blame her mama, not her fault she'd caught the fever, and the girl was smart enough to know that being angry at a disease was stupid and pointless. If the Alliance had killed her mama, or Reavers or some no good bandits, things would've been different. She could've focused her anger, made it into hate and given it a place to go, but the fact was no one was to blame for Zoe's death; it was just something that happened. That made it harder because without anyone to blame there was no one to make pay, no vengeance or satisfaction to be had.

At least she had a family on _Serenity_. She had her aunts, and uncles, and her little cousins, who tried not to be too bothersome for her, for awhile anyways. That pack of _wenshen_ couldn't control themselves long.

Solomon Derrial and James Quinn Reynolds were the captain and Inara's twin boys. Sam and Jay--or Sammy and Jamie if they weren't in too much of a "don't call us by those baby names" kind of mood; Double-Trouble when they'd been up to no good (which was just about always)--were seven when Louisa moved onto _Serenity_ and they loved their cousin somethin' fierce. During their visits on Qilin, she'd taught them to climb trees, to fish and swim, to catch lizards and snakes, and to skip rocks on the glassy black surface of the lagoon in the forest out behind her house. She was older than them, smart, pretty, funny, tough; they idolized her.

When she moved onto _Serenity_, the twins were real upset. Aunt Zoe had gone to be with her ancestors, their mama told them, and Louie was missing her; she was sad. They didn't like seeing their big cousin sad and went pretty far out of their way to try and make her happy, even if it did involve stealing a whole box of chocolate bars off the back of an Alliance transport on Ariel and an awful lot of running from the purple-bellies who chased after 'em. The chocolate didn't help none though, and the boys were stumped as well as grounded. They, like their daddy, had very little grasp on how to deal with the female of the species.

Auntie Kaylee and Uncle Simon had three girls at the time, but the bright woman was glowing and about ready to pop with the fourth. Jessamine Lee, Angelica Simone, and Rose-Ellen Beth Tam spent most of the first few weeks she was on the ship camped outside Louisa's locked bunk door. All sunshine and strawberries, the five, four, and two-year-old chattered nonstop about how Aunt River had already told them they were getting a baby sister and they were gonna name her Ginger Marie. Sure enough, seventy-two hours of labor and three sets of big ole brown puppy dog eyes later, the last Tam child--or else Uncle Mal was gonna give Uncle Simon a _yinjing_-ectomy 'fore he got populated right off his own ruttin' boat--was christened Ginger Marie. Jessie, Angie, and Rosie were calling her Ginny by dinnertime.

Louisa really loved her cousins but, besides the fact that they were too little to do much with, she didn't want to play games and chatter on about stupid stuff when her mama was dead. She kept to herself for a long while, strong and silent, trying to be like her mama because her mama wasn't around to do it herself. She spent a lot of time holed up in her bunk or the hidden smuggling compartments during day-cycle. During night-cycle, she would venture out to walk the ship. Everything was quiet and dark; the little ones were fast asleep and no one was around to pester her to talk. She liked it that way; she didn't want to talk--talking wouldn't help or change anything.

Sometimes, she'd run into Aunt River on her nightly walks. The woman would peer at her through a curtain of long sleek hair, hair Louisa had to admit she got a little jealous of whenever it came time to deal with her own tangled mass of red-gold frizz. Aunt River would look at her, face blank and eyes hugely dilated, and she would mutter "not ready" before passing by like a ghost, almost walking on the air with graceful dancer's steps. It was a bit creepifying but everyone was used to creepifying behavior from Aunt River; that's just how she was.

Other times, much more often if they were on one of the longer trips that tended to make him a bit stir-crazy, Louisa would find Uncle Jayne lifting weights in the cargo bay. He never said much to her either; he'd wipe his sweat off the bench, beckon her forward, and hand her a pair of his lighter dumbbells. The silent company was nice, as was feeling her muscles stretch and burn, watching them become defined on her lean form. It helped take her mind off everything else.

That's why, one night about a year and a half after her mama had passed on, Lou was stunned to find that the stinging she felt in her soft blue eyes was not from the sweat running into 'em as she strained to push the big barbell up away from her thin chest just one more time. She tried to fight it back, didn't even know what the hell it was about or how it had gotten set off, but in the end _Serenity_'s ceiling and Uncle Jayne's face had blurred.

Louisa Agnes Serenity Washburne finally cried for her mama.

She just about scared the life right out of Uncle Jayne, the hardened merc turning to helpless, panicked putty at the sight of the itty bitty girl sobbing for all she was worth. Crying girls were not his thing and it seemed that the tinier they got, the worse it was. He tried to comfort her but, after a few awkward pats on the head and offers of engine wine to calm her nerves, the big man got on the com and radioed urgently for help.

All of _Serenity_ came running, Uncle Mal barely awake and brandishing his gun at some unperceived threat, Uncle Simon fiercely trying to put on a pair of still buttoned pants before falling over and falling down the cargo bay stairs, Aunt River slinking up behind the others with a knowing look in her dark eyes as she murmured, "Ready." They ran in and found little Lou Washburne about to come apart from crying so hard and didn't know what it meant. Everyone had been worried. Grieving is one thing, but acting like a zombie for nearly two years is something entirely different.

"Aw, _mei-mei_," Kaylee cooed, tears already in her own eyes as she rushed forward to pull the girl into a big smothering hug. "Don't cry, _bao bei_," The woman soothed, petting down tight red-gold curls as she rocked the thin creature in her arms, "It's gonna be alright." Crying that much harder, Louisa found solace in the embrace of _Serenity_'s sunshine and strawberries, bawling hysterically until she dizzily just could not stay awake any longer. Hardly aware of the continuous string of soothing nonsense still reaching her ears, she let herself sink into a warm darkness.

Louisa woke up back in her own bed. Aunt Inara was there, soft and almost saintly past the haze of incense smoke. Lavender, she identified blearily, lavender and patchouli and geranium. It was so relaxing, so peaceful, luring her back into the nothingness of sleep.

But Aunt Inara saw she was awake, tenderly brushing the girl's wild hair away from her eyes as she smiled and stated, "Good morning. How are you feeling?"

"Stupid," Louisa answered before she could stop herself, immediately blushing and rolling away to face the bunk wall.

Aunt Inara only hesitated for a brief moment before her hand fell onto the girl's back. "You're not stupid, _mei-mei_," She stated soothingly, her voice soft and even, full of guidance, "You're mourning as you should. It is a natural process and trying to stop it from coming will only make the experience that much harder on you."

"But I don't want it," She murmured, hiding her face in a soft feather pillow she'd taken off her mama's bed, "It hurts and it's not fair."

The hand on her back was moving in slow circles, up and down, smoothing out the tension with a practiced ease. "I know, _bao bei_," Aunt Inara answered wisely, "But it will lessen. You... you must keep flying."

Louisa laughed, for the first time in... what felt like forever. "You've been hanging around with the captain too much," She scolded lightly, turning to smile over her thin shoulder with watery blue eyes, "His Mal-isms are starting to rub off."

Aunt Inara returned the soft laugh and everything actually started to feel alright.

The girl started going out of her bunk more during day-cycle, started talking with her aunts and uncles, playing games with her little cousins. She started finding some happiness in being able to explore every next new port, new sights and smells and people. She could enjoy it; it was her dream to see the 'Verse and she knew that, even though she never told her mama the dream, her mama would be glad to hear she was living it.

Fifteen was when Louisa was given her first title: Official _Serenity_ Babysitter. She was to look after the younger ones while the rest of the crew was off doing their own work. It wasn't all that glamorous or exciting, it wasn't goin' on jobs, but it was something. It made the teen feel useful, like she was really a part of the crew instead of just the orphan they'd taken aboard out of loyalty to her parents.

And it really was an exhausting full-time gig. Sam and Jay were just turned nine and all full of trouble. They stole and fought and broke stuff as easy as normal folk breathe, and Double-Trouble _always_ had a scheme in mind.

With the dark hair of his mother and blue eyes and strong moral compass of his father, Sam was the leader; he was tough and thoughtful and real protective of those he loved. His trouble always seemed to have a more solid purpose: stolen chocolate to make Louisa feel better after her mama died, pilfered extra blankets for the girls when they complained about their toes getting cold during night-cycle, a few gallons of real siphoned milk so the thumb Uncle Jayne broke in a bar fight would heal up strong. On one notable occasion, a vital piece of _Serenity_'s engine had gone missing just in time to strand the crew on Jiangyin for the one-night only circus show. Everyone had a blast; the missing part was later found at the bottom of Sam's clothes hamper.

Jay, sometimes Jamie, sometimes Jimmy, sometimes _James_ when he was feeling real proper or tryin' to suck up to his mama, was the unpredictable one. He had lighter brown curls that waved and swirled instead of coiling like Louisa's own and dark eyes that could flash from one emotional extreme to the next without a warning. He had a temper as volatile as nitro in the sun but still found time to be sweet and goofy and mischievous just for the hell of it, because he enjoyed putting his underbritches on his head and dancing around the cargo bay naked while his daddy gave a furious chase, because he enjoyed watching Kaylee get confused as she grasped at the screwdriver he kept tugging further and further out of her reach with the long piece of string he'd tied to it, because, no matter how many times Alliance officers brought him and his brother back to the ship by their ears, he just couldn't pass up the chance to call them _ching-wah tsao duh liou mahng_ purple-bellies straight to their core-bred faces. Jay was a force of nature and Louisa tended to wake up wondering just which side of him she was gonna see that day, hell, what he was gonna insist on being called that day and if it would even last the whole cycle.

Sam was a mountain, solid and unwavering; Jay was a fire, keeping everyone near him warm one minute and burning everything in his path the next.

The three elder Tam girls were every bit their mother's daughters.

Jessamine was seven, with her mama's dark brown eyes and sunshine smile. She could light up a room just by entering it and always seemed to end up the center of attention without even trying, 'specially when she danced that special blend of Aunt River's classical ballet and her own manner of carefree little girl. She was warmth, and joy, and people gravitated towards her like moths to a flame, planets circling a copper-haired supernova of pure happiness.

If Jessie was the sunshine, Angelica was the strawberries. It always amazed Louisa that such a young child, a girl barely turned six could be so utterly sweet and selfless. She was always bringing home injured animals for her daddy to fix, always urging her cousins and siblings not to fight, always so teary and worried whenever anyone got hurt. Folks loved Jessie because her sunny personality was downright dazzling, an awesome, powerful thing to experience; folks loved Angie, everyone's little angel, because her soft brown eyes, and shy smile, and even the ribbons in her strawberry blonde hair couldn't help but leave something purely good deep down in their hearts.

Rose-Ellen, called Rosie by everyone but her daddy, was four. She had dimpled cheeks and a freckled nose and the sparkliest brown eyes ever seen in all the 'Verse. She was a dreamer, always off in a land of make-believe having fantastic adventures with imaginary friends. The girl would talk, but she was quieter. It wasn't a shyness just... the sense that Rosie's world was just that: Rosie's World, a place where purple butterflies were so thick in the air that there was hardly enough oxygen left between 'em to live off, where she rode around on a giant pink frog named Melvin and Uncle Jayne dressed up for her tea parties and didn't even grumble.

Ginger was still a baby, still in diapers and just barely starting to toddle when Louisa was first put in charge. Unlike her sisters, she was all her daddy. She had dark hair, and blue eyes, and that determined "I have to understand it" way about her. Jessie and Angie could spend hours cooing over the engine with Auntie Kaylee; Rosie seemed to be the only one who really fully understood Aunt River; Ginny's first and most favorite toy was a stethoscope.

Yup, the little ones were more than a handful of trouble but they were well worth it. As the years went on, as Louisa dutifully played the babysitter, the referee, the teacher, the confidant and friend, she found herself coming more and more into her own, into the person she wanted to be. She didn't always feel sad anymore; she could laugh and play just 'cuz it felt good. Aunt Inara and Uncle Simon started giving her school lessons. She was real surprised to hear how smart she was. Aunt Inara helped her tame her hair a bit and for awhile she thought she might even be pretty, in an awkward, rangy teenager kinda way. Auntie Kaylee taught her how to work some stuff on the engine and she felt real proud of herself for learning about _Serenity_'s heart. Uncle Mal and Uncle Jayne taught her shooting and fighting and she felt safer and stronger and more capable than ever before.

But it was Aunt River who taught her to fly, who took her by the hand one day and led her up to the bridge, who sat her in the pilot's chair behind the console that still displayed just two of her daddy's immense plastic dinosaur collection, who smiled one of those enigmatic smiles of hers and declared, "Destined for this. Destined for greatness. Born to fly."

xxxxxxxxxx

Translations:

feng le - crazy

wo ai ni - I love you

wenshen - troublemakers (lit. plague gods)

yinjing - penis (scientific)

mei-mei - little sister

bao bei - sweetheart

ching-wah tsao duh liou mahng - frog-humping son-of-a-bitch

xxxxxxxxxx

Author's notes:

Qilin - A mythical Chinese chimerical creature said to appear in conjunction with the arrival of a sage. It is a good omen said to bring _rui_, roughly translated to mean "serenity" or "prosperity." It is often depicted with what looks like fire all over its body and said to appear only in areas with a wise and benevolent leader.

Nagapie - Small, nocturnal primates native to Africa. They are also known as bush babies or galagos.


	2. Part 2: Firsts and the Big Second

Part 2 - Firsts and the Big Second

Louisa Agnes Serenity Washburne was seventeen the first time she got shot.

From what her mama told her before she died, getting shot was an inevitable part of being on Uncle Mal's crew. Everyone had taken a bullet or two at some point; even Aunt Inara had a ricochet scar marring her slender calf.

But Lou was the babysitter. Uncle Mal had expressly forbidden her from ever going on a job, proclaiming that Zoe would come back from the dead just to kill him if he did. Lou could deal with that but honestly didn't expect to get shot being the babysitter.

Not that it was anyone's fault, but she supposed that Rosie was at least partly culpable for the situation she'd found herself in. Dreamy little Rosie Tam wandered away in the crowded Persephone marketplace and it was Louisa who had to chase after her. The redhead hadn't gotten far; she was just a few dozen booths down, utterly mesmerized by a young gaffer and the lump of molten red glass he was blowing up like a delicate balloon.

"Come on, _mei-mei_," Louisa scolded with a playful half smile as she scooped the little six-year-old clean off her feet, "Don't wander. You're gonna get lost."

"Look, Louie!" The girl chirped excitedly, pointing to the smooth orb that was fading to luminous, swirling purple as it cooled, "It's so pretty!"

"Sure is," Louisa agreed, turning to smile at the handsome young glasssmith as she asked, "Excuse me, how much?" Rosie's birthday was coming up soon and this would be a perfect present.

Wiping sweat out of his kind hazel eyes, the dark-haired boy leaned across the counter and charmingly declared, "For you, _bao bei_, nothing but a kiss."

Louisa was barely aware of Rosie giggling into her shoulder as she felt her face grow hot. "Well... uh..." The teen gaped, unsure of how to react so naturally ending up blurting the first thing that came to mind, "Wouldn't that make me a _jianhuo_?"

He laughed, standing up a little straighter to rest one elbow on the top of the booth's window and making Louisa painfully aware of just how tall and built and _swai _he was. "Not if I take you to dinner first," The young man drawled, his lopsided smile turning towards Rosie as he teased, "I think your _jie-jie_ here is real pretty. Put in a good word for me and I'll make it worth your while." He picked up the cool, hollow circle of deep purple glass and offered it out to Rosie. She took it with a delighted squeal, already lost in gazing into its gleaming surface as she held the grapefruit-sized orb between her two tiny hands.

Louisa knew that her freckled face was probably a very unflattering shade of red but she still tried to keep herself composed as she stated, "You didn't have to do that. I can pay you-"

"What are you doing later tonight?" The young man cut her off, smirking and quite obviously very amused that he'd managed to fluster the slim teen.

"I... uh..." Louisa answered rather dumbly, "I dunno. Nothin' I guess."

"Good," He stated, wiping his sooty hand on the thick leather apron he wore before offering it out to her, "I'm Danny Wei. What's your name?"

Awkwardly shaking the boy's hand, she tried to fight a smile as she stated, "You can call me Lou."

Danny looked rather pleased with himself, grinning broadly and stating, "Well, Lou, where should I pick you up?"

Just barely starting to be convinced that this wasn't some joke, Louisa sheepishly returned his grin as she stated, "The Eavesdown Docks. Ship's name is _Serenity_."

Winking, Danny responded, "Perfect. I'll be there at eight."

"Ok," Louisa said, shell-shocked, backing away through the bustling crowd with Rosie still giggling in her arms. "Bye, Danny!" The little girl yelled at the top of her lungs, waving brightly, "Thank you! I'll make sure Louie doesn't be a chicken for your date!"

"_Mei-mei_!" The teen shrieked, finally turning and running off back towards where she left the other kids, "I am not a chicken!"

Snickering, already half-gone in the colored patterns on the surface of her new treasure, Rosie assured, "Not a real chicken. You don't got no feathers." Louisa couldn't think of any reply so simply ended up laughing and shaking her head at the little girl's antics.

When she got back, Sam and Jay were wrestling in the dirt right in the middle of the walkway, Jessie and Angie yelling at them to cut it out while everyone else simply stepped over or around the boys. "Hey!" Louisa yelled, setting Rosie down on her feet before grabbing both the Reynolds twins by the backs of their necks and yanking them apart, "Cut that out! I know your mama raised you better than brawling in a marketplace!"

Covered ass to ears in dust and muck, the boys pouted and hung their heads. "We was just playin'," Sam argued, dark hair in disarray and blue eyes sad. "Ya!" Jay quipped grumpily, brown curls dirty and plastered to his tan forehead with sweat, "You were gone a long gorram time, Lou!"

"Watch your mouth, _di-di_," She ordered firmly, finally setting the boys down, "And I wasn't gone that long."

"Louie's got a date!" Rosie announced, giggling with her sisters, "She's gonna kiss him and he gave me this pretty purple bubble to make sure she doesn't turn into a chicken!"

"What?" Jessie wondered brightly, the nine-year-old redhead adjusting the hold she had on little Ginny's hand, "A chicken? Are you pretending again, Rosie?"

"I'm not!" The girl insisted, "His name is Danny and he's real nice!"

"The chicken's name is Danny?" Angie asked pleasantly, fully willing to humor her little sister.

Scowling, Rosie cried, "No! Danny is Louie's boyfriend! Louie is the chicken!"

"Ok, that's enough!" Louisa declared, her face getting hot as she picked Ginny up off the street, "I ain't a chicken and I don't got no boyfriend!" Ginny gave a big yawn, the four-year-old brunette curling up against her big cousin's chest. Grateful for the excuse, Louisa announced, "Ginny's sleepy so it's time to be gettin' back to the ship."

"Awww!" All the kids whined, dutifully following like a row of baby ducks.

Back on _Serenity_, after Ginny was down for a nap and the other kids were distracted by a game of hoop ball, Louisa wandered into Aunt Inara's shuttle. "Are you busy?" The teen asked nervously, fidgeting with the hem of her worn green t-shirt as she stood in the doorway.

"Not at all," The elegant woman answered with a warm smile, discreetly closing the ledgers she'd been working on. Scooting over on the narrow, fancy bench, Inara patted the vacant seat and beckoned, "What can I do for you?"

"Well, uh," Louisa answered, very uncomfortable as she sat down and found Aunt Inara's arm around her slim shoulders, "A boy sort of... asked me on a date and I sort of... said yes."

Beaming, the former Companion soothed, "That's wonderful, _mei-mei_! Would you like my help getting ready?"

"Ya," Louisa agreed, nodding emphatically, "That and, also... could you make sure Uncle Mal doesn't... you know... try to shoot him or anything?"

With a grave laugh, Inara soothed, "Of course. Now, what's this young man's name?"

Louisa smiled, "Danny."

At seven-fifty that night, Danny Wei knocked on the closed hatch of the ship called _Serenity_. A large, downright terrifying bear of a man opened it. "WHAT?" He barked, pointing a really, really huge gun right in the teenager's face.

Hazel eyes crossed as he stared down the barrel, Danny weakly stuttered, "I-I'm, uh, lookin' for Lou... i-is she here?"

The large man's intense glare got downright murderous as he demanded, "What's your angle, boy?"

"Jayne! Now you cut that out!" A sunny redheaded woman laughed as she appeared behind the man. She smiled brightly, cooing, "You must be Danny. Come on in. Lou's just finishin' gettin' ready."

"Thank you, ma'am," The boy responded politely, quickly skirting around Jayne to follow her into the cargo bay. There he found that his situation was not all that better. The four little girls giggling in the middle of the room weren't so bad; he waved and winked at little Rosie with her pretty ball of glass. But then he turned and finally noticed that there were two more men with guns standing at the bottom of a set of metal stairs, flanked by two little boys who were scowling and looking like they'd be wielding weapons as well if they were permitted. Danny was starting to think that maybe this wasn't such a good idea...

But a vision in red was suddenly descending those same stairs and he completely changed his mind. When he saw Louisa in the marketplace, he thought she was real cute. Now... she was downright gorgeous. He felt himself smiling stupidly as he stared up at the tall bronze-skinned girl with the wild red-gold curls and soft blue eyes as she floated down towards him in a slinky red dress that barely reached her knees. It was an old one of Inara's that the women on _Serenity_ had spent almost all afternoon altering to fit Louisa's taller frame. Danny could see the muscles in her bare arms and legs and was fair certain that she could probably kick his butt if she really wanted to. But she was just so... wow.

"Hey, Lou," He gaped dumbly, no longer caring he had three--oh, make that four; the big guy from the entry hatch had one in each hand--loaded weapons trained on him, "You look real nice."

The girl beamed, luscious red lips parting to form words the boy barely heard, "Thanks. You look real nice yourself." Danny straightened the collar on his good white church shirt, irrationally pleased at receiving such a compliment from such a pretty girl.

"Ya, ya," Mal finally cut in, jabbing the boy in the chest with his pistol as he stated almost conversationally, "Everyone looks great. It's a nice evening out, wouldn't you say? How 'bout this weather? If you hurt our girl, we will shoot you, _dong ma_?"

Blinking in confusion, Danny took one more look around the crowded, heavily armed cargo bay and did not doubt that assertion. "_Shi_, sir," He agreed gravely.

Starting to look just a bit embarrassed by the antics of her family, Louisa quickly pushed past her uncles and jogged over to take Danny's arm. "Bye, Uncle Mal," She called as she dragged the boy towards the door. Just as they were exiting _Serenity_, the girl couldn't resist smirking and calling over her shoulder, "I'll try not to wake ya'll up in the morning!" The gun shot hit the wall right beside Danny's head.

Despite starting out with a near murder, Louisa's first date went pretty well. She insisted on buying their dinner of noodles and rice and ice planets from the street vendor--to pay Danny back for the little treasure he'd given to Rosie--and the two teenagers walked around the marketplace just enjoying each other's company. After his initial shock, Danny even joked about never having been shot at over a girl before, that Lou must've really been something special if she was guarded so fiercely. She blushed and smiled.

The evening ended innocently enough. At around midnight, Danny walked her back to _Serenity_ and kissed her goodnight at the door. He gave her his address and told her that she should write to him while she was off having her adventures, that she should wave him next time she was going to be on world. Still feeling a bit like she was floating, Louisa could only nod and smile as she backed into the ship.

But even the post-kiss stupor couldn't prevent Lou from immediately noticing that several boxes of cargo, as well as Uncle Jayne's weight bench were overturned. "_Guai-guai long de dong?_" The girl muttered to herself, immediately defensive as she drew a small gun out of her handbag. The bag was Auntie Kaylee's but the gun was Uncle Jayne's; he and Uncle Mal had insisted that she take it as a condition of letting her go on the date. They were hoping she'd shoot Danny but it seemed like she was gonna have to be shootin' whatever piece of _go-se_ had been messin' with _Serenity_.

She crept up to the bridge all quiet like, just like she'd been taught by the ship's resident merc and mind-reading assassin. Aside for the fact that all the bunks were empty, nothing seemed out of place. Louisa was getting a real bad feeling in the pit of her stomach.

Down in the passenger dorms was where she finally found everybody. They had long since been converted into the children's quarters and were strewn with dolls and stuffed animals and model space ships. Even a few of Louisa's dinosaur collection were mixed in since she sometimes allowed her little cousins to play with the plastic figures.

Uncle Simon wasn't really appreciative of that fact seeing as how he'd been tied up and hurled to the floor right on top of a rather pointy stegosaurus named Glenda. They were all there, the children bound and gagged in their beds, whimpering in fear as the adults tried to uncuff and untie themselves from the various fixtures around the room.

Eager to rush in and free her family, Louisa didn't notice Aunt River vehemently shaking her head.

A man had been standing out of sight just inside the doorway. He was there for the cargo they'd gotten from Badger that afternoon but what he wanted was hidden pretty well thorough. He tied up the crew and had been ready to start tearing the ship apart when he realized from the manifest that one member was missing: Louisa Agnes Serenity Washburne. He didn't want to be walked in on so he laid in wait for her, just planning on tying her up with the rest but panicking when she busted in armed; he hadn't expected her to be so gorram quiet. The guy was young and pretty inexperienced; the only reason he'd been able to subdue the crew was 'cuz he'd had Rosie for a hostage and made Uncle Simon tie up the rest while holding a gun to his little girl's head.

Getting shot didn't hurt as much as she thought it would--at least not right away--but Uncle Simon later said that was just from the adrenaline already coursing through her system. Louisa felt it, and it hurt, but it was more like someone just throwing a rock pretty hard at her side; she didn't even realize she'd had a bullet pass clean through her.

She fell to the floor, rolled beneath one of the bunks, and did not hesitate to squeeze off a round right between the thief's eyes.

He seemed to take forever slumping to the ground, all slow and jerky and not quite dead yet despite the half his brain that was splattered all over the wall behind him. Lou's side, just below her ribs on the left, was throbbing pretty hard and her vision was hazy. She thought it was just from hitting the ground too hard and from the gun smoke hanging in the air.

When she was sure the man was dead, she carefully crawled out from under the bunk and disarmed him. She then wordlessly went to work untying Uncle Simon. She got dizzy though, his concerned comments becoming a dull, incoherent buzz as she swayed on her feet.

Everything was a bit of a blur after that, but Louisa woke up in the infirmary with a great big bright light shining right in her eyes. "_Wo de ma_," She groaned, getting a strong urge to throw up and then curl into a ball to help fight some of the pain she was feeling.

"Lie still!" Uncle Simon insisted, his voice harried and just a little bit fearful as his hands came to gently hold down the girl's shoulders, "You're going to pull out the weaves!"

"Alright," Louisa agreed weakly, squeezing her eyes shut tight to hold back the nausea, "But I sure hope someone got the registration off the cruiser that ran me over, or at least the 'how's my flying?' number. I can tell you right now that my answer is gonna be 'bad.'"

The joke was met with silence and she risked another peak to find that Uncle Simon was looking very grave as he examined the neatly stitched wound in her side. "I got shot," Louisa gaped, the events of the previous night coming back to her in a rush.

With a very solemn nod, Uncle Simon confirmed, "Yes. Some _tah mah duh hwoon dahn_ was after the cargo... are you in pain?"

"Think I might be hallucinating," Louisa chuckled tiredly, achy and sore and exhausted and wincing as she discovered that laughter was not such a good idea at the moment, "Could've sworn I just heard you curse."

The doctor blushed and Lou found it rather amusing that he could still turn such a shade of red even at the ripe old age of forty-six. It looked funny with the gray hair around his temples. "Yes, well," He murmured sheepishly, inserting a loaded syringe into the I.V. line snaking into Louisa's arm, "In this case, it's more than warranted... you did so good, _bao bei_. Your mother would be proud."

Louisa was smiling as the drug pulled her back into nothingness.

Uncle Mal was real upset over the fact that Zoe's baby had gotten shot; that's what he kept calling her for the next few weeks, not Lou or Louie but Zoe's baby. He beat himself up over it pretty good and there was even some talk of forcing the girl to wear body armor twenty-four-seven so it wouldn't happen again. It got downright irritating, 'specially on top of Uncle Simon's naggin', Auntie Kaylee's and Aunt Inara's frettin', and the unendin' stream of chatterin' from the little ones. Since Lou was mostly confined to either the infirmary or her bunk, she couldn't escape any of 'em.

Uncle Jayne was real proud of her shooting skills. Sneaking out of the infirmary for a walk before she went crazy, the girl came across Jayne in the dining area one night-cycle about a week after it happened. He'd grinned and slapped her on the back just a little too hard. "You done good, kid," The aging merc stated, gesturing for her to sit down across the table from him, on the other side of the whiskey bottle and shot glass, "Your mama woulda been proud."

"Thanks, Uncle Jayne," Louisa answered with a smile.

He nodded and poured a shot. But then he did something a little odd: he slid it across the table. After a permissive nod, Louisa hesitantly reached out and took it. The amber liquid burned like acid on the way down and, as she was coughing and holding her aching side, the girl wondered why anyone in their right mind would ever want to drink the stuff.

She didn't much like Uncle Jayne laughing at her reaction, and 'specially not his show-off move of swiftly and effortlessly downing a shot of his own while she was still close to gagging. "Gets a little easier every time," He commented wisely, "Just like shootin' folks."

Louisa put her head down a bit. "I had to," She insisted.

"I know, darlin'," He reassured, his voice low and kind, "You did right by all of us and that's what counts but it don't change the fact killin' can really twist a person up. You let us know if you start feelin' twisted up, _dong ma_?"

"Sure," Louisa agreed quietly, smiling adoringly at the big man, "_Xie-xie_."

A month to the day later was the first time Louisa caught wind of the upcoming war. Uncle Simon had finally cleared her to be off the ship for a bit and she was walking through a little town on Whitefall when she first got to noticing that something had changed. It wasn't anything electrifying, more brown coats on the backs of folks in the rim words they visited, whispers in bars, rumors that the Independents were forming a new army for a new try at the freedom they all desired.

Louisa dug out her mama's old brown coat and claimed it for her own.

Around the same time was when Louisa first brought up the notion of going to flight school. Uncle Mal stubbornly vetoed the idea. "You're already a natural pilot!" He'd blustered, near-panic at the thought of her leaving written all over his weathered face, "Why do you need to go through some gorram training program when you can already do a barn swallow at full burn?"

He was right; Louisa let the matter drop.

The anniversary of the Battle of Miranda, as it was called, had always passed with solemn reverence. During the year 2538, a full twenty years after that epic battle that could almost not really be called a battle since it was two vast armies versus just one 03-K64 Firefly class mid-bulk transport, twenty-two rim worlds broadcasted their secession all throughout the 'Verse using the Mr. Universe's salvaged equipment.

Louisa was eighteen and, from just the look in his blue eyes, she could tell right away that Uncle Mal knew she'd had a hand in it, that he'd realized her consorting with anyone in a brown coat on any world they passed through hadn't been as harmless as he thought. He realized that Louisa had been making plans to join up ever since she'd decided flight school was not what she was meant for. He got to kicking himself pretty hard for convincing her of that one.

"You're leavin' us?" Sam Reynolds gaped, blue eyes wide and fearful as he watched his beloved big cousin packing her rucksack.

Just eighteen, still in the process of deciding which of her vast dinosaur collection would bring the most luck, Lou argued, "It's not forever. I just gotta go do this, _di-di_. I'll be back 'fore you know it."

"But you're still goin' away!" Jay bellowed. The curly-haired twelve-year-old was completely red-faced just from the effort of holding back furious tears, "You're goin' away and you won't be here with us anymore! Don't go, Lou!!"

"I'm gonna be back," She soothed, sitting down on her bunk and patting either side of herself for the boys to come take a seat. She slung a lean, muscular arm around each of them, "You'll see. I'm gonna make the 'Verse a better place for you and the girls to live in and then I'll be back. _Serenity_ is my home and my family and ain't nothin' gonna change that."

The twins hid their faces against the young woman's strong sides. "We don't want you to die," Sam sniffled, clinging tightly to his cousin's worn, second-hand brown coat.

"Ain't gonna," Louisa asserted quietly, smiling softly and hoping it wasn't a lie, "It'll take more than a bunch of stinkin' purple-bellies to kill me."

"Promise?" Jay begged urgently, staring up at her with huge, glassy dark eyes.

Nodding, Louisa responded sincerely, "I promise."

Uncle Mal had a fit when she announced her intentions at dinner that night. They were stopped on Paquin and his screaming could be heard for miles in all directions; several inhabitants of the ships docked nearby even wandered over to inquire as to what the fuss was all about, if somebody was getting murdered ironically aboard the boat called _Serenity_. Uncle Mal kept calling her Zoe's baby again--"I ain't letting Zoe's baby run off to get killed in a war we already lost once and that is final!"

In the end he'd declared that he just would not take her to the Independent recruiting station several worlds over, that he'd landlock the whole gorram boat until she got some sense into her stubborn skull. Louisa got off right then and it took her nearly three weeks to make the long journey to Athens and her destiny.

When she reported her name and parentage, she got looks of awe. Louisa Agnes Serenity Washburne found that she didn't dislike her name so much anymore once it had that shiny "Independent Air Force Master Sergeant" bit at the front. She got a real kick outta writing to Uncle Mal bragging that she already outranked him, even if he never did bother writing back.

Due to her daddy's stellar flying record--she'd been completely unaware until that point that he'd actually been a pilot in the First Unification War--and the tales of her mama's downright legendary bravery, loyalty, stealth, and aim, Louisa immediately got assigned as Flight Chief of the 92nd Airborne Attack Squadron; her men quickly renamed themselves the Lean, Mean, Serene in honor of their fearless leader and her renowned extended family.

Commanding up several dozen small bombers and their crews at any one time, the young woman found herself relying more and more on the wisdom she'd gathered from her years on _Serenity_. Uncle Mal's even and unwavering leadership seemed to channel through her effortlessly and earned respect from everyone she met; Auntie Kaylee's endless optimism made appearances in the darkest and most hopeless of hours; Uncle Jayne's parting advice of "when in doubt, kill everything that moves" saved her squadron on more than one occasion.

But war was hard, violent and gruesome and bloody. The screaming and dying never seemed to stop; it seemed to get so much louder in the nightmares. Louisa and her men kept on flying, but the fires and the horrors and the losses wore heavy on them all. Like Lou, most of the soldiers were barely eighteen when they'd enlisted; most of them went dead inside the first time they helplessly watched the plane of a friend, brother, sister, lover go down in flames.

For two long years, the Lean, Mean 92nd was the Independent's greatest asset. In one of the few letters from home that managed to reach her at the front lines, Jessie proudly reported to Louisa that she'd heard a pair of purple-bellies call the Lean, Mean and "the hellcat that commanded 'em" "merciless demons who rained brimstone and death down from the sky." The letter had remarks of love and luck from all the crew--even a pair of real ugly knitted socks from Uncle Jayne--but not a word from Uncle Mal. She didn't like that he still wasn't talking to her; she was hoping he'd forgive her real soon.

Louisa's ship was a 01-B25 Widow class stealth bomber that she immediately christened _Dino_. It was a small boat, only able to tightly house Lou, her mechanic, and two gunners, Scotty, Paloma, and Jun-Chen. It was shaped like an hour-glass lying on its side, like the marking on the belly of a black widow spider. The cockpit was in the narrow middle, situated right over the engine and payload; the wedged wings were strapped with outside machine cannons and short-range missiles. Lou loved _Dino_ almost as fierce as she loved _Serenity_. He was strong and true, scary fast and all kinds of deadly; he was capable of some downright miraculous maneuvers, most of which had never before been attempted because no one in their right mind would. Lou's favorite was a move she named the Crazy Washburne.

Long after the war, Louisa happened across a stream of footage that had been taken from the ground sometime during her first year of flying; it was _Dino_, out in front of enough bombers to turn the sky as black as the ship. It was a real pretty sight and every bit as intimidating as the stories said.

On July 17th, 2540, _Dino_ got shot down on Hera. As she was pulling herself out of the mangled wreckage, Lou gravely noted that it _would_ have to have been that world. Serenity Valley was just barely five miles to the north; Uncle Mal was gonna get a kick out of this.

Her crew were all dead, the mechanic and the two gunners, Scotty, Paloma, and Jun-Chen, and she would never forget the immense feeling of failure that came over her when she realized it. They'd trusted her and she'd let them die.

But there wasn't much time to dwell. Lou was down behind enemy lines and she had a rather large piece of shrapnel embedded in her left thigh. It was only from Uncle Simon's lessons that she knew how to keep from bleeding to death, how she managed to do field surgery on herself without blacking out even once despite biting through four layers of leather in the process.

With a limp and a plastic pterodactyl and a semi-auto machine pistol named Loretta, Lou walked until she hit gunfire. The Independent forces were pinned down on the far side of a shallow gulley when she joined them. Despite a right pretty motivating speech from Lou, the few dozen who were left got captured after two days of intense resistance

Independent Air Force Master Sergeant Louisa Agnes Serenity Washburne became rather unfond of her name once again. The purple-bellies just about wet their pants when they figured out who they had and everything went downhill from there.

The beatings weren't so bad, nor the starvation and rapes and torture. Hell, not even the infection that set in on her leg brought Lou anywhere close to a broken spirit. This was what she'd signed up for, to prove to the Alliance that there was no amount of pain in the whole 'Verse that could make a person give up on her God-given freedom and she wasn't about to back down.

Forty-seven days they had her in that P.O.W. camp. On the eve of the forty-eighth, Lou discovered that her long legs had finally gotten skinny enough to slip right through the narrow metal grating that made up her cell. She waited patiently for her chance and, when it came, wrapped her thighs around one the guard's necks; she snapped it clean in two. The liberation of the camp at Lazarus became an instant legend, along with the liberator herself. Sarge Washburne unlocked all the cells and killed most of the purple-bellies with the gun she lifted off her dead guard. Hundreds of prisoners, malnourished and beaten and near-death, stormed the rest of the inadequate battalion attached there.

The book of codes stolen from the main office, the fact that the Independents managed to hide the turn over of control for the rest of the war while they fed false intel and listened in on Alliance battle plans, was what turned the conflict in their favor.

Lou was already in a hospital on the newly taken world of Greenleaf; the docs managed to save her injured leg but not her baby; she hadn't realized she'd gotten pregnant from the rapes and then all of a sudden she was miscarrying at five months, a fatherless little baby boy she didn't even get to hold.

She was stuck on Greenleaf until the end of the war with no way of getting word to her family of where she was. One of the generals, who amusingly enough turned out to be that brat Caleb Tao off her home world of Qilin, told her he'd informed the crew of _Serenity_ of her likely death soon after she went down; he told her that they'd been out of range ever since, presumably powered down on Haven to keep the young ones out of danger; he told her that he'd given Uncle Mal her "posthumous" medals and Independent Air Force First Lieutenant bar.

January 5th, 2541, came to be known as Freedom Day. The Alliance signed a treaty that abolished themselves as a governing entity, that turned the known 'Verse into the hands of the United Republic of Independent Worlds, that created a Parliament, that ensured equal representation for every planet. It was like a gorram fairy tale.

In February, finally fed up by her complete inability to reach her family, Lou left the hospital against medical advice; Danny Wei, an infantry corporal who was recovering from having his legs broken, helped her make the escape. Her trip to Haven was considerably easier than she thought it would be; seemed like everyone she came across was more than willing to give her rides and none of 'em would take a cent off one of the 'Verse's biggest damn heroes.

But it was still the beginning of April before she got to Haven, with a slight limp and a still shiny-pink scar slashing across her right eye. She'd still had no luck getting _Serenity_ to answer a wave and was starting to get real worried for her family. As soon as her feet hit dirt in the early morning, she was off running to find 'em.

She came across the little ones first, though not a one was as little as she remembered. It was almost with awe that Louisa stood just outside the courtyard of the three circled houses and watched a pair of strapping fifteen-year-old boys roughhouse in the dirt, a bubbly thirteen and twelve-year-old girl working together on salvaging an old piece of junk engine they'd dragged home from the scrap yard, a precious eight-year-old with her daddy's dark hair trying to operate on her _xiao-xiong_, a dreamy ten-year-old watching the clouds roll by in the sky that had finally been made free just for her.

As luck would have it, dreamy little Rosie Tam with her head in the clouds was the first to notice Louisa's presence. The girl turned her sparkling brown eyes in the direction of the open gate and Lou almost sobbed with relief; sometimes, when the pain and fear was greatest, she'd been sure she would never again see the sparkliest brown eyes in all the verse.

"LOUIE!!" Rosie screamed, instantly up and running at the tall woman of just twenty-one, crying hysterically as she hurled herself into her kneeling big cousin's arms. They'd thought she was never coming home but here she was.

"Louie?" She heard Sam and Jay gape, sounding equally hurt and mournful until they realized that she was home. "LOUIE!!" Their screams were loud enough to be heard for miles all around, just like their daddy's, only these ones were deliriously happy and the neighbors that heard 'em knew Haven would be seeing a great party that night.

"LOUIE!! LOUIE!! LOUIE!!" All the kids were shouting as they ran to trap Louisa into a big hug, all crying and hollering and saying how they'd been told she was dead.

"Couldn't have been dead," She murmured, not fighting the tears of joy wetting her hollowed bronze cheeks as she fiercely grabbed them all to her at once with long, powerful, scarred arms, "I promised I'd be back, didn't I? And a promise is a promise."

After what seemed like a lifetime, Louisa finally let the kids go. Trying not to visibly wince as she stood, the Air Force First Lieutenant balled her fists at her still too skinny hips and laughed, "Let me get a proper look at all a ya'll! Come on, fall in... _wo de ma_, Sam, Jay, you two are giants!"

The twins beamed, preening like cocky teenage boys are want to do.

"Jessie, Angie," Lou continued, seeing the flood of tears still leaking out of the brown eyes of Sunshine and Strawberries Tam, "You're getting to be such pretty young ladies. I'll bet you been breakin' hearts left and right all through the 'Verse!" They laughed tearfully, their mama's smile bright on both their faces.

"Ginny," Louie whispered to the youngest Tam child, the dark-haired one who took after her daddy, "Why, I hardly recognize you! You was just a bitty thing when I left! Look how grown up you got!" She gave a shy smile, blushing as she gazed adoringly up at this figure she only remembered through myth and legend.

Rosie was just staring and Lou immediately knew that the puzzled but hopeful look on her sweet face meant she wasn't entirely sure she wasn't dreaming the moment, that her imagination hadn't run away with her again. Reaching out to cup her cheek in one long, slender hand, Louisa just winked. The smile that broke out on the little girl's face was utterly beautiful.

"They sent us so many medals for ya, Lou!" Sam proclaimed proudly, he and Jay each taking one of her hands and dragging her towards the middle house in the group of three. "Dad put 'em all up on the mantle!" Jay added, practically bouncing from happiness, "You got a Air Force Cross, and a Distinguished Service Medal, and a Air and Space Campaign Medal, and nine Medals of Honor, and four Purple Hearts, and tons and tons of citations! And you're a lieutenant, Lou!"

"That's _First Lieutenant_, Jamie," Louisa teased as she allowed the children to pull her inside the Reynolds' home. Just like they said, the mantle was overrun with medals and ribbons and she got tears in her eyes just thinking that Uncle Mal was the one who put 'em up. Maybe he'd forgiven her after all...

"Boys," She heard Aunt Inara's voice coming from one of the back rooms, sounding tired and blessedly familiar, "It's too early for you to be yelling like that. Please, try to be a little quieter."

"But mom-" Jay began to argue only to be cut off by a mischievous smirk from Lou. He and his twin and all the girls were giggling hysterically as Louisa called, "Sure thing, Aunt 'Nara! I'll keep 'em quiet for ya! Hell, I'll gag the brats if I have to!"

Two loud thumps of bodies falling out of bed echoed through the house.

And then Inara and Mal were in the doorway, all rumpled from sleep and gawking like they too might be unsure of whether or not they were still dreaming. Louie smirked, teasing, "Well, this a homecoming or a freakshow?"

Inara instantly broken herself out of the trance, running across the room crying and launching herself at Louisa, at their lost lamb who'd miraculously made it home to them. Lou was real pleased to discover that her elegant aunt still smelled like incense and oils, that some things never would change.

As Inara cried into her shoulder, Louisa looked past her own tears to lock eyes with Uncle Mal. Blue to blue; they needed no words to pass between them for an understanding to be reached.

It wasn't too long before she found herself being hugged fiercely against his chest, the aging captain pressing his face into her tightly-coiled red-gold hair to hide his tears. "Your mama and daddy would be so proud, _bao bei_," Uncle Mal proclaimed, his voice shaking out of sheer relief, "I'm so proud 'a ya." It was all Louisa could do to squeeze him back as she tried not to bawl on pajamas.

That was the first and only time she ever saw Uncle Mal cry.

xxxxxxxxxx

Translations -

mei-mei - little sister

bao bei - sweetheart

jianhuo - whore/slut (lit. cheap commodity)

swai - cute

jie-jie - big sister

di-di - little brother

dong ma - are we clear?

shi - yes/affirmative

guai-guai long de dong? - what the hell?

go-se - crap

wo de ma - mother of god

tah mah duh hwoon dahn - mother humping son of a bitch

xie-xie - thank you

xiao-xiong - teddy bear

xxxxxxxxxx

Author's notes -

Lazarus - A man Jesus is reported to have resurrected from his tomb after four days of death (also see: The Lazarus Phenomenon - when a person spontaneously returns to life after resuscitation has been given up).


	3. Part 3: Battle Scars

Part 3 - Battle Scars

United Republic of Independent Worlds Air Force First Lieutenant Louisa Agnes Serenity Washburne was twenty-one when she arrived on Haven seeking her family after her victory in the Second Unification War. Scarred in body and mind, the young woman was floored to find her Aunt River pregnant at forty.

"_Ai ya_, Aunt River!" She gaped, pulling the woman into an awkward hug, "You're havin' a baby!"

Returning a cunning smile, River put her lips right up against Lou's ear and whispered, "A deuce. Shh."

With a girlish giggle she thought she lost somewhere on the battlefield, Louisa responded, "That mean Uncle Jayne finally get his act together while I was away?"

"_Wei_!" The big merc grunted, still as growly as ever with his beard gone gray at fifty, "Lieutenant or not, you ain't too big to put over my knee, little Washburne."

Lou shot him a smirk, remarking, "Kinky, but I'd like to not have Aunt River killin' either of us with her mind, thanks."

"Grew some mouth on her," Jayne grunted into his breakfast, tugging his fiance's chair closer to his when she finally went and sat down beside him. The woman grinned contentedly.

"Sooo," Jessie Tam--Lou was still having a hard time wrapping her mind around the idea of the little redhead being a teenager--chirped from Lou's side, her and Jay having won the prized seats after a rather intense wrestling match amongst the _Serenity_ children (Sam was the one who really won it but he just couldn't resist his cousin's tearful pout), "Did you bring us anything?"

"Jessamine Lee!" Auntie Kaylee scolded, still sniffling into Uncle Simon's hankie, "That ain't no way to greet your cousin! She just got back from a war!"

"S'alright, Auntie Kaylee," Lou answered, digging into her stuffed rucksack, "Course I brought ya some stuff! Here-" Jessie and Angie squealed in utter delight when they were each presented with a shiny, fully-stocked toolbox--Jessie's was bright yellow with sun stickers all over it and Angie's was pink with strawberries. Sam and Jay each got his very own army-issue brown coat, which the boys accepted with uncharacteristically quiet awe. Rosie got a whole armful of brand new storybooks and Ginny got a real field medic's kit.

"And I didn't forget the rest of ya'll," Louisa assured proudly, "There's a crate of some surplus pistols and grenades waiting at the docks for you, Uncle Jayne, and a whole mess of parts for Auntie Kaylee and _Serenity_." The two adults gave a pair of disturbingly similar whoops of joy.

"I brought you some of that tea you like, Aunt 'Nara," Lou continued, "And a couple 'a new handheld medical scanners I know you must've had your eye on, Uncle Simon." They grinned quietly, radiating with pride and honor as their adoptive niece listed, "Aunt River, you're getting some books and a new ballet barre, and, Uncle Mal, you've got a job, if you want it."

He very nearly spit out his breakfast. "Ya," Lou went on without skipping a beat, "The Republic's first act is getting up a steady stream of medicine and supplies to the rim worlds so they're lookin' to contract some cargo boats. It's a legit job, fair regular, and well-paying. Supply Corps, is what they're callin' it, and the head is gonna wave you in a few months to see if you're interested."

"That..." Mal gaped uncertainly, "That sounds real good, _bao bei_. I'll give it some thought... but you're gonna stick around with us for awhile, right?"

"'Course," Lou asserted with a weak smile, "I am in sore need of a _long_ ruttin' vacation."

That first day back on Haven seemed to pass real slow. There was a lot of crying and hugs, all her whole family randomly reaching out to touch Lou's cheek or arm just to assure themselves that she was actually alive. Louisa wordlessly surrendered a copy of her medical records after she caught Uncle Simon staring at the long, shiny-pink scar slashed across soft blue eye.

"Why are some parts blacked out?" He'd asked suspiciously, the blocks of ink giving him an eerie feeling of déjà vu.

The words she'd blacked out were still burned in her mind: "severe sexual assault trauma," "pregnancy due to rape," "second trimester miscarriage: male."

"It's just classified junk, Uncle Simon," Louisa lied effortlessly, trying hard to ignore the mournful look she caught from Aunt River, "Codes and Special-Ops and such that the Republic don't want fallin' into the wrong hands. Don't worry, I wasn't experimented on none." The doctor gave a reluctant nod and immersed himself in reading the file, in assuring himself of Lou's health.

Sam and Jay begged for stories while the girls indulged Rosie in a tea party. Sipping air out of a little toy cup, Lou regaled the twins with tales of excitement and valor; Ginny sat in her lap, the girl's dark hair soft against her cousin's tattered brown coat as she listened to Lou's strong heartbeat with Uncle Simon's old stethoscope.

That night, they had a bonfire. There was more fresh meat and fruit and vegetables than Louisa had seen in near three years; she ate more than even Uncle Jayne. There was dancing, twirlin' and twirlin' and stompin' round the great fire; even with her pregnant belly, Aunt River was still unnaturally graceful and all the bachelors of Haven lined up for a turn to take a spin with First Lieutenant Washburne. Near the end, Uncle Jayne was playin' his guitar, the music all soothing and twangy as his deep voice turned the planet's air to smoothers. Louisa fell asleep beside the fire, content to find herself cuddled up amidst the _Serenity _children; "like a pile of puppies," she heard Uncle Mal remark fondly as she hugged Ginny to her like a squirmy teddy bear and drifted off.

Louisa woke in a cold sweat, panting and terrified and not knowing where she was, convinced she was still in the prison camp on Hera. Ginny squirming restlessly in her arms, Jay mumbling against her butt, Angie having a running dream somewhere past her feet, they were what let Lou know she was home, safe, literally surrounded by family that loved her.

She carefully disentangled herself from the rest of the pile of puppies, leaving the innocent ones to fill in her gap in the search of warmth. Lou barely made it away from the light of the dying bonfire before she fell to her knees and started crying real hard. It felt like her heart was gonna tear right out her chest and she wasn't sure if she would care even if it did. She thought being home would make everything better but it just seemed to make everything worse. Nowhere were her losses and horrors and scars so apparent as when she was surrounded by innocence and unconditional love and the memories of what she used to be.

She was so tired. So very tired. It was real tempting to just lay down and die.

Aunt River floated before her out of the darkness, wraith, witch, angel, a harvest goddess with her belly all swollen and promising as the young spring. Shadowed eyes sad, she held out her hand.

The walk was dark and long but Lou trusted Aunt River to lead her, just like all the men that had trusted in their sergeant and had ended up dead. She was still crying for those men, for herself, for her mama and daddy, and... her baby.

"Too many ghosts," River stated quietly, stopping in the midst of the Haven graveyard, right between where Lou's mama and daddy lay side-by-side. The graceful dancer was forty, wild hair shot through with hints of gray, but she seemed so much older, seemed like she should be toothless and blind and wrinkled, an ancient prophetess in a lonely mountain cave. "Too many ghosts," She said again, "Carrying too many. Must let them go, let him go. Meant to be. Not your fault."

It was almost too dark to make it out but Lou looked down and saw that a tiny pit had been dug between her mama and daddy; it would only be big enough for a baby.

Lou fell to her knees and just stared into that black hole for what seemed like the longest time. Aunt River still floated behind her, barefoot and heavy with twins--a boy and a girl; Lou cried again when they were later named Jayne Michael Jr. and Alleyne Iolana Cobb. River put a hand on her shoulder, her eyes tilted to the stars as she proclaimed, "Bury him so he will not bury you... they will watch over your boy."

"I woulda loved him," Louisa murmured tearfully, pouring her loss into the empty black pit, "Didn't matter how he came to be. I woulda loved him anyways."

"Yes," Aunt River agreed pensively, voice far off and eyes glassy, "Would have made him a wonderful mother, protective, strong. Would not have let him be anything like the hateful laughs and bruising touches of his father. Would have made him a good man."

A loud sob ripped through the stillness of the night air as Louisa grieved for what might have been.

Aunt River placed a hand on top of her adoptive niece's head, a gesture of absolution for her pleading whisper, "Cannot see your future until you can see one for yourself. _Run-tse de shang-dee_, do not take her now that she has returned to us. Grant her the strength to stay in the sky. Young leaf on the burning summer wind, your winter is but a state-of-mind."

Almost all on their own, Lou's hands reached out for the mounds of dirt resting outside the small hole. It felt like a whole world lifting off her chest when she filled in her baby's empty grave, when she took the simple wood cross from Aunt River and wrote "Hobie" across it in thick black letters before hammering it into the ground.

No one ever said a word about the tiny marker.

Haven was peaceful for many months; Louisa slept a lot, fell easily back into her role as the babysitter, tried not to be too annoyed by Uncle Simon's nagging about her health. Her leg always would ache, the scars would never completely fade, and Lou learned to bear those burdens as she did the rest, as reminders to be thankful for life.

Uncle Jayne and Aunt River married in June. Alleyne and Jayne Jr. were born in July; they came into the word as loud as their father, as graceful as their mother, pure and beautiful enough to more than make up for everything that had been taken from the spirits of both.

Uncle Mal took the Supply Corps job; most of the crew was getting on in years and he figured it was a cushy, legit way to make a fair decent living until his days ran out. Uncle Jayne and Aunt River decided to stay on Haven; they wanted their twins to grow up with soil beneath their feet and the free sky above their heads. Aunt River also made one of her real cryptic comments. Went something like: "Out with the old, in with the new telling of the same tale. Maybe a happier ending this time."

So that left _Serenity_ short a merc and a pilot. Lou had a hard time choosing which role she wanted to fill but eventually opted for pilot; she wasn't as fast as she used to be with the hurt leg and didn't want to risk getting anyone killed. 'Sides, she might've been a crack shot and a expert soldier, but flying was where her real gift lay, her true calling and her true love; Sam teased that she just didn't want some stranger touching her bridge.

They weren't expected to meet with much trouble, but Uncle Mal said he'd feel better knowing his crew, his family, was well-protected; he started interviewing new mercs.

With Lou at his side, standing tall and proud and eerily silent just like her mama used to, Mal went through about a dozen potential applicants. None of 'em was right for _Serenity_; a few were just downright creepifying, and not in the good way like Aunt River.

They met their new merc in the Maidenhead on Beaumonde. Uncle Mal was real excited about this one, having been referred by his old pal Monty, who was still alive and well and living the good life on Verbena with a wife and three sons. Guy's name was Odin Machado and he supposedly had a list of recommendations as long as Uncle Mal's leg.

Louisa took an instant disliking to him.

"He bothers me," She declared, her hand itching for a gun butt to rest on as she glared suspiciously at the stocky young man at the end of the bar. There was just something about him, about the loud, blindingly neon zebra-print collared shirt he wore, about the little house he'd built out of fried protein sticks, about the conversation he was having with the little fried protein stick people he'd made to live in it, about the way that ugly ass goatee sat on his square jaw, about the way the hairs on the back of Lou's neck stood on end the first second she laid eyes on him.

He sure was a sorry lookin' _hwoon dahn_, all awkward and twitchy and just... not right. It wouldn't do to have a twitchy merc, and especially not one that didn't look a bit intimidating with that mop of ridiculously feminine curly blonde hair on the top of his melon of a head; he looked like a girl, a gorram bearded girl who'd probably be prettier in a dress than Louisa.

Uncle Mal had to put a whole lot of effort into holding back laughter, arguing, "Monty swears by him and he seemed good to me. He's got four other crews lookin' to sign him on."

"He's a shrimp," Louie grumbled, irrationally angry as she found herself once again glaring at Odin--Mac, he'd insisted that they call him Mac during the interview--over the top of her beer, "A twitchy, girly little shrimp and I'd like to snap him in half!!"

"Now, _bao bei_," Mal soothed, trying not to laugh outright, "I thought it was all manner of gentlemanly that he pulled out your chair for ya. Your Aunt 'Nara's been trying to get me and the boys to do stuff like that for years."

Louisa shot him a dagger of a look, snapping, "Which don't got nothin' to do with good a merc he is! I think we can do better!"

Just then, a raucous sounded at the other end of the bar. Mal and Louisa turned just in time to watch Mac pick up a man who had to have weighed at least three hundred pounds and effortlessly throw him clear across the room before jumping on and proceeding to beat the hell outta him, cracking strange jokes all the while.

Mal grinned and sauntered over to offer Odin "Mac" Machado a job aboard _Serenity_.

Mac made his first significant action aboard the Firefly bouncing up to the bridge to bug her pilot. Not having yet been briefed on what a very bad idea it was, he unwisely tried to touch the plastic dinosaurs sitting on the console; Louisa broke his gorram nose, hurled him off the catwalks into the cargo bay, and was about to put him out the airlock before Uncle Mal intervened.

"I can't have you breakin' my new merc first day I got him," Uncle Mal scolded, making Louisa feel all of seven-years-old getting caught trying to hi-jack the spare shuttle again.

"He started it!!" The young woman muttered, glowering through the infirmary window and watching the insufferably happy merc laugh with Uncle Simon as the doc patched him up. She could've sworn she heard Uncle Mal actually _giggle_, whirling on him and glaring venomously before stomping off back to the bridge.

"I think he's sweet!" Auntie Kaylee cooed, sitting with Lou and the girls on the catwalks as they watched Mac helping Sam and Jay with their cargo stowing duties. The twin boys certainly had taken a shine to him, real thrilled that he'd promised to take them hunting later that afternoon. The prospect of guns and fresh meat had quickly lost Lou the only two voices for her cause she'd had onboard.

"He ain't sweet," She insisted, thoroughly annoyed by the way she got all tense and uncomfortable whenever the muscular blonde was around, "He's a menace and _I don't like him_."

Aunt Inara, Auntie Kaylee, Jessie, and Angie all twittered into their hands, sending Lou stomping off towards the bridge again; she was starting to wonder if the new merc had put some kinda stupid juice into the ship's water supply.

During _Serenity_'s first three month journey as part of the Republic Supply Corps, everything went smooth and shiny. Nobody shot at 'em, they got heralded as all out angels on most of the destitute rim worlds they landed on, and, aside from one fondly remembered medical supply heist on Ariel, the pay had never been better.

Louie avoided the merc like he had plague and the smart-mouthed, twitchy, gorram irritating little shrimp took every opportunity to seek her out, to follow her around, to try to make friendly conversation and get her to smile. All the doctoring that had to be done during that run was on Mac as a result of Louisa punching him, kicking him, and, on one notable occasion, shooting him.

"My finger slipped," She asserted hotly, standing in the middle of the dining area with her arms crossed defiantly over her chest.

Uncle Mal was trying to look furious but it was kinda hard with the corners of his mouth quirking up like they was. "Now, _bao bei_, I know that just ain't true," He stated sternly, "You're one of the best shots in the 'Verse and you don't shoot nothin' you ain't aimin' for. That said, why'd you shoot my merc in his rear?"

"'Cuz I felt like it, alright!" The woman snapped, "And he's bein' a big gorram baby! It was just a air rifle! Uncle Simon said it didn't even break the skin!"

"But it still stung plenty bad!" Mac argued, limping in holding an ice pack to his backside, "You had the pressure cartridge dialed way up!"

Lou glared, declaring, "I've killed purple-bellies didn't whine half as much as you! Those air rifles are _toys_! Sam and Jay been shootin' each other with 'em since they were in diapers!"

Pouting, looking utterly ridiculous with his mop of curly blonde hair, nappy beard, and wide, thick-lashed, girly green eyes, Mac fired back, "I'll have you know I bruise easy! Look at this-" The bastard then went and dropped trou, right there in the room where the crew ate their meals, where Jay took his first steps, where Ginny learned to swear.

"UGH!!" Lou shrieked, throwing her arms up to shield her eyes and vowing to kill Uncle Mal, who was collapsed on the floor in hysterics, "You put that away, you _hwoon dahn_!! _Bu-yao-lian de dong-xi_!! I don't need to ever be seein' your pasty little rump!!"

"Look at this bruise!" Mac carried on, seeming to be thoroughly enjoying torturing the ship's pilot, "Have you ever seen such a shade of blue? It's downright unnatural!"

"You're the only thing on this boat's unnatural!!" Louisa raged, eyes on the floor as she fled the room. Seeking safety on the bridge, she screamed over her shoulder, "You keep pointin' that thing at me and I'll shoot you for real next time!! _Cao ni zu-zhong shi-ba dai_!!"

When they finally made it back to Haven, Lou was plenty relieved. She figured for sure Uncle Jayne would take her side hating the cocky, shrimpy _wang-ba dahn_ that had replaced him aboard _Serenity_. Horrifyingly, the big man was instantly smitten with the lad.

"Aw," Angie Tam cooed, pretty and petite at the tender age of thirteen, watching with a sweet look in her soft brown eyes as two generations of mercenaries cleaned their guns round the Cobb family kitchen table. "Ain't that cute?" She asked, sitting on the floor between Aunt River's slender legs to get her long strawberry-blonde hair braided, "I think Uncle Jayne's got himself a man-crush on Mac!"

The mercs were laughin' and jokin' like old friends, swappin' stories and proudly reportin' the names of each of their girls. Cuddling with dark-haired baby Alleyne, Lou couldn't help the audible growl that escaped from deep in her chest.

The crew stayed on Haven a whole two weeks, visiting with the babies and former mercs, getting a tour of Uncle Jayne's infant cattle ranch. It was real impressive just how much had gotten done in such a short time, how much had changed.

However, Louie couldn't enjoy herself, not with that irksome Mac and his ugly ass beard and ridiculous hair and loud polyester shirts always following her around.

The first night back onboard, after she'd put the ship on auto-pilot and left Jay to take the first watch, Louisa entered her bunk yawning and fully looking forward to falling asleep surrounded by the familiar hum of _Serenity_'s engine.

She found a big bouquet of wildflowers in her bed.

"What in the name of Buddha's holy asscrack is your major malfunction?" The woman bellowed, bronze face tinged red like her hair as she came storming into the cargo bay brandishing the flowers the same way she would a sword.

Mac was there, shirtless and sweaty from lifting weights. After shelving his barbell, sitting up and coolly mopping his pale forehead, the man shot her an amused smile. "What makes ya think those are from me?" He laughed innocently.

Lou got all stuttery and confused and flustered. She was vaguely aware of the dumbfounded look on her face, of her mouth hanging wide open but speechless as her cheeks got hot. "You didn't put these in my bed?" She finally gaped, real embarrassed and wanting to go slink off somewhere to hide.

"No, I did," Mac teased playfully, "Just wonderin' why ya thought so."

The woman could barely see straight she was so mad.

"They reminded me of you," The merc claimed sweetly, leaning out to smell the ruttin' frilly things, "All beautiful and wild... you don't like 'em?"

"No I don't like 'em!!" She vehemently claimed, still clutching the flowers like a weapon as she turned on her heel and stomped away, "I got no use for this kinda frippery!!" As she was leaving, Lou added, "And stay the hell outta my bunk!!"

Back in her room, Louisa almost threw the flowers straight into the trash chute; she never would understand why she didn't. It just... seemed such a waste. Despite where they came from, the foolish things were kinda pretty. She hung 'em upside-down in her closet, letting 'em dry and get all brittle, letting 'em infuse their sweet smell into all her clothes and giving her a little hint of earth even while deep in the Black.

A day before _Serenity_ was scheduled to touch down on Regina, Uncle Mal came down with a flu. It wasn't nothin' serious--regardless of his moanin'--but Uncle Simon said it was best the captain stay in bed a few days. That left Lou to take his place on the supply drop.

"It's a milk run, _bao bei_," He'd insisted, all snotty and pale and secretly (obviously) enjoying having Aunt Inara fuss over him, "You can even take Sam and Jay with ya. They need to romp a bit and tire themselves out so they stop drivin' me and their mama crazy."

Lou was all on board for the idea, except for the part where the merc came along, the part where he sat next to her in the mule and rambled on nonsensically while she did her best to resist the urge to crash them all into a mountain just to shut him up.

They reached the Regina Central Supply Station in just fifteen minutes but it seemed like a helluva lot longer. Sam and Jay jumped out before Lou'd even brought the mule to a stop, the boys real eager to get their job of moving the boxes of medicine, protein rations, and agricultural tools inside so they could enjoy some of the leave-time they'd been promised.

Louisa had just barely gotten her feet on dirt when she saw a man appear in the doorway of the small building. He was tall and weedy, with greasy black hair and cool blue eyes. She recognized him in an instant; she'd never forget a single one of men who'd raped her in the Lazarus camp. After the takeover, she'd seen to personally executing most of 'em but a few had already been reassigned...

Quicker than anyone could blink, the _chou-bi_ had three bullets in his gut and a fourth straight to the groin.

"_Ai ya_!" Mac shouted, stupidly running towards the injured ex-soldier, "You crazy, woman? What'd you do that for?"

"Hit the dirt, _ben dahn_!!" Lou ordered, sprinting to tackle Sam and Jay behind cover as three armed men appeared in the window and opened fire. After a very stern threat for the twins to stay put--they were just sixteen and their mama would be real unhappy if either got himself shot--Lou crawled on her belly to get a look at the scene.

Mac was pinned down behind a small rock just ten feet or so in front of her; the three men were still shooting from inside the supply station. With a deep breath, Louisa charged out guns blazing.

She shot the first two in the space of just a few moments, clean holes right in their foreheads. When she took aim at the third, that fool Mac appeared in her gun sight. During the split second it took for her to decide not to shoot the merc right in his useless back, the third gunman managed to clip her upper arm; Mac put a bullet through his heart.

Everything was dead silent for what felt like hours and then... "_Wo de ma huh tah duh fong kwong duh wai shung_!!" Mac gaped, smudging dust across his nose and forehead as he ran up behind Lou on her journey towards the building, "How'd you know it was a trap?"

"This one was going for his gun," Louisa lied, rolling over the still live man in the doorway and ignoring his bloody gurgles of pain as she searched his pockets. Darien Pasternak was his name, a former purple-belly infantry grunt turned pirate.

"Uh, no he wasn't," Sam argued, peeking his head over the top of the rock he and his brother were still hid behind--they knew better than to even think about moving a gorram muscle until they were told.

"He was if I ruttin' say he was!" Their big cousin snapped fiercely, kicking Darien Pasternak hard in the ribs before stepping over him and leaving him to die a slow death in the dirt where he belonged.

They found the real Supply Corps personnel inside the building, tied and a little bit roughed up but none the worse for wear. The folks were real grateful for being rescued and thrilled they hadn't gotten their sorely needed supplies stolen.

Lou had a hard time concentrating on their words of praise; her fingers kept absentmindedly reaching into her pocket for the wallet that burned a hole there. She didn't remember Mac gently cleaning and wrapping the deep, stinging graze on her arm, nor could she even begin to fathom how she managed to fly the mule back to _Serenity_.

The young woman of just twenty-two didn't stick around on the boat; as soon as she was sure Sam and Jay were safe aboard, she took off walking for the nearest town, for the nearest open bar.

All the booze all the credits in Darien Pasternak's wallet could buy later, just as she was about ready to jump across the counter and strangle the bartender for refusing to run her a tab--she was no lightweight but the blood loss had messed with her tolerance and the nosy yokel was trying to cut her off--Odin Machado sat down on the next stool.

"Two," He ordered pleasantly, tossing down a few credits and smiling as the cranky bartender poured a pair of shots. Lou grabbed one without invitation and knocked it back just as effortless as all the rest she'd consumed.

Mac sipped the other and made a face before inquiring, "Somethin' on your mind?"

Bristling, Lou slammed her empty glass down on the bar and yelled, "Ya! You ever step in my line of fire again and I _will not_ hesitate to shoot you, _dong ma_?"

Mac finished his drink with a tight grimace that bloomed into a happy grin. "'Course, Louie," He agreed, voice all syrupy, "Thank you very much for not shooting me today when you had the chance. It was right sweet 'a ya."

Louisa growled, shoving herself to her feet with the intention of storming out. The falling over sorta ruined that plan.

"Easy!" Mac cried, gracefully darting out to catch the tall young woman before she could hit the floor. He wrapped one of her long arms around his broad shoulders, fitting her snugly into his side as he offered, "How 'bout letting me walk you home? It'll be my penance for almost makin' you go and shoot me."

"Ya," Lou agreed weakly, resting her head against his strong, surprisingly warm and solid shoulder, "Alright. I guess you do owe me one for that."

Mac grinned like a toddler with a shiny new toy as he started them towards _Serenity_. The ship wasn't too far but the walk was slow. Louisa could barely keep herself awake. And she knew she must've been real drunk 'cuz she was finding Mac kinda comfortable to lean against.

About halfway there, the stocky blonde merc suddenly commented, "I been wonderin', _bao bei_... how'd you really know about that trap today?"

Lou snorted loudly, answering, "I didn't. Just rec'idnized the _gou-zai-zi_ and had a powerful need to put some lead in him, is all. Here-" She went to dig in her pocket for the wallet but unwisely tried to use the arm Mac had securely around his neck. She accidentally yanked real hard, pitching the merc headfirst into the dirt; Lou landed right on top of him.

"See!" She stated obliviously, waving the old Alliance I.D. in Mac's slightly pained face, "He was a _bun tyen-shung duh ee-dwa-ro_ purple-belly!"

Mac took the wallet from her slender hands, smirking when she collapsed backwards onto the ground with a boneless sigh. After a moment of quiet speculation, he tucked it back into the woman's old brown coat. "He do you wrong during the war?" The merc asked quietly, no hint of a joke in his voice.

Once again, Lou snorted. "Well, ain't you just _jen duh shi tyen tsai_?" She mocked, "Somebody give the boy a medal!"

Grinning, he carefully disentangled himself and got the both of them back to their feet before teasing, "Think you got enough for the both of us, hero."

"Ain't no hero," Louie insisted, dizzy and tired and no longer able to keep from giving in to the urge to just let her eyes drift shut, "And get yer gorram hand off my rear."

Everything got a bit blurry after that, but Louisa woke up back in her bunk. She was half-undressed but still dirty from the road; she had a fresh weave and bandage on her left upper arm, not to mention one helluva hangover throbbing inside her skull.

After struggling into a clean flight suit, she stumbled off towards the kitchen in search of some tea. Standing at the stove, she damn near jumped out of her skin when a voice suddenly laughed right by her ear, "Mornin', sunshine."

"AHH!!" Lou shrieked, whirling around and sloshing most of her cup of hot water right into Mac's face.

"My eyes!!" He cried, looking downright ridiculous as he clawed blindly at his skull, "My beautiful eyes!!"

"Here!" Louisa ordered, quickly slapping a cool dishtowel into the merc's face, "You gorram fool!! Ya tryin' to yourself get killed sneakin' up on me like that?"

"No," The young man whined, taking a few moments to soothe his scalded face before removing the towel and pouting, "Just bein' friendly, is all-" He cut himself off at the look of complete shock that he got from Lou, his blotchy face splitting into a wide grin as he teased, "Somethin' the matter?"

"That ugly ass thing on your chin!" Louisa gaped wildly, "It's-it's gone!"

Mac beamed. "Sure is," The merc said, bringing up a hand to rub at his clean-shaven, surprisingly handsome jaw, "Just like we agreed last night."

"Last night?" She asked, feeling herself grow pale and then absolutely red. She snatched up a kitchen knife, holding it on the frightened merc as she growled, "You best start sayin' your prayers if you was the one removed my trousers!"

Rough, broad hands held up defensively, he pleaded, "Whoa! Now that ain't necessary! All I did was help your aunties carry you back there! They kicked me out 'fore any of the undressin' got done!... by the way, they told me to remind you of the conditions of Jayne's Law, whatever that is."

Jayne's Law: After a _Serenity_ crew member gets injured, no matter how minor, they must first see the doctor before runnin' off to drink themselves stupid. Failure to comply will earn septic vac duties for a month.

Uncle Jayne ruined it for everyone by almost dying one too many times.

Hesitantly lowering her weapon, Lou put her free hand over her throbbing forehead, grumbling, "Alright, I guess... what was you sayin' about an agreement?"

Mac grinned as he reported, "You said that if I shaved off my... well, I believe you called it 'the furry eyesore hangin' off my lower lip,' then you'd let me court ya."

Louisa's mouth fell open. "I did no such thing!" She asserted hotly, "That's impossible!"

The merc gave a flirtatious little wink, announcing, "I got plenty 'a witnesses, _bao bei_. You like dancin'? 'Cuz we're gonna be on Sihnon in a few days and I hear they got some real shiny dance clubs."

Hard as she was trying, not a word would come outta Louisa's mouth, not even a swear. Mac seemed to be thoroughly enjoying himself, though he was a little unsure, smiling nervously as he remarked, "Ya got beautiful eyes, lamb chop."

Lou finally found her voice. "UNCLE MAL!!!" She screamed, loud enough to bring the whole of _Serenity_ tumbling out of their beds in fright.

After the crew intervened, after Louie and Mac were sent to opposite corners of the ship to prevent the furious young pilot from killing the merc, Louisa unhappily found out that Mac had been telling the truth about that agreement. Uncle Mal was even there when she'd submitted to the terms, and Aunt Inara, and Uncle Simon, and Auntie Kaylee, not to mention all the kids overhearing as they spied from the other side of the infirmary door.

She was stuck. Over the next week, all her attempts to weasel out of the conned date were squashed by her traitorous family and their good intentions, their desire to see her "go out and have some fun with someone her own age because she more than deserved it."

Despite chartering the longest gorram route to Sihnon she could manage--turning the three day trip to seven under the guise of avoiding a falsified meteor shower--they still seemed to arrive far too quickly.

"But I don't wanna wear a dress," Lou pouted, stubbornly refusing to cooperate with Kaylee and Inara's attempts at getting her ready for her date, "I got shot the last time I wore a dress!"

"But you looked so pretty!" Jessie insisted, the fourteen-year-old pleased as pie to be painting her toenails a cheery shade of orange.

"Ya!" Auntie Kaylee cooed, forty-four and still nothin' but a wide-eyed teenager at heart, "And Mac's such a sweet fella! Why don't you try to go enjoy yourself, Louie? I bet you'll have lots of fun together if you just quit bein' so set to hate him!"

Inara gave a soft smile, seeming proud of the younger woman's words of wisdom as she added, "Really, _mei-mei_. All he wants is to show you a good time. What's the harm in that?"

Unable to think of a reply that didn't make her sound like a sulking child, Louisa crossly submitted to being dressed up and decorated like a gorram doll. It was real strange feeling silk against her skin after so many years of nothing but coarse synthetics, getting painted and powdered and made to smell like flowers instead of gun oil; having her tightly curled red-gold hair taken out of its no-nonsense ponytail and arranged to tumble elegantly over her bare shoulders was even a bit terrifying.

"What's that?" She overheard Mac ask, stepping quietly over the catwalks and trying to prevent herself from being noticed for as long as possible.

"Oh, just the List," Uncle Mal reported, handing a thick pile of papers to the merc, "See, me, and Jayne, and Simon, and the twins all put our heads together and made up a list of all the ways we would kill anyone what tried to hurt our girls." The blonde's already pale face blanched, his green eyes getting wide as he skimmed the pages and pages of atrocities; some even had disturbingly detailed pictures.

"Yes," Uncle Simon agreed coldly, falling very well into the threatening demeanor not many would suspect him to be capable of, "They're just a guideline, really. And we won't use them on you." A split second of relief flashed across Mac's clean-shaven face before Simon added, "Lou would never leave killing you up to us. She'd want to do it herself and she's a lot more creative with those types of things anyways."

"Captain, Simon, I told you a million times to throw out that dumb list 'a yours!" Auntie Kaylee scolded, finally bringing the men's attentions up to the procession coming across the catwalk, "Jessie didn't talk to you for three gorram weeks after you scared away that boy from Boros! I woulda thought you'd learned your lesson!" The captain and doctor visibly winced; it was kind of a funny look for the graying men of fifty-five and fifty-one. Mac shot Kaylee a very relieved smile.

His smile quickly turned into an expression of shock and adoration as he laid eyes on Louisa. She was coming down the stairs all slow-like, trying not to trip in the ridiculous heeled sandals Aunt Inara'd made her wear. She was so much taller than Inara that the former-Companion's old silk dress barely made it to her knees; it was just long enough to cover a shrapnel scar on her left thigh, a deep shade of gold, strappy and slinky and all manner of shiny.

An elbow from Sam reminded Mac to breathe, the merc blurting a curt, "Damn."

"Save the sweet-talk," Louisa snarled, making sure the merc got a good view of her tucking a revolver into her purse as she stomped the rest of the way down the stairs, "Let's just get this over with."

A long, awkward walk later, Lou was inside a crowded, smoky club and feeling mighty outta place, wondering how long the blinding strobes would take to give her a seizure and save her from the nightmare. It wasn't like the bars, saloons, pubs, and taverns she was used to; this was a young people's hang-out, with inane chatter, and frilly fruit drinks, and pounding music, and... that dancing.

"You gonna make me beg, _bao bei_?" Mac inquired, smiling brightly as he cocked his head towards the floor full of writhing bodies.

Louisa took a long sip of her drink, making a face and muttering, "_Lan-dan jiang_... I don't dance."

The merc smirked, fiddling uncomfortably with the plain, albeit reflective red collared shirt he wore. "Sure ya do," He answered, "You got a dancer and a former-Companion for aunts. Hard to believe they never taught you nothin'."

"Ain't the same," Lou argued, not liking how exposed she felt in her short, slinky dress, how she could feel people staring at her, "I ain't ever danced like this... it's ruttin' to music."

"Rosie warned me you might turn into a chicken," Mac stated, shrugging as he went back to enjoying his fruity spiked punch.

Bristling, Lou grabbed him by the arm and dragged him towards the floor.

She didn't know the song; even the heavy, chaotic beat was foreign. She didn't know the steps; all her angry courage seemed to disappear in an instant, leaving her standing dumbly amongst a sea of twisting bodies. She didn't belong with these silly, innocent core kids who knew how to flirt and hadn't left buckets of their own flesh and blood on nearly every planet in the 'Verse.

Before Lou could run, Mac's solid form came crashing into her back, big hands falling to trap her slip hips against his as he guided both their movements. "Just feel it," He whispered into her ear, voice rough and pleading, piercing deep and causing an involuntary shudder from the war-torn soldier in gold, "Stop thinking and just feel it."

They locked eyes for the longest moment, soft sky-blue to deep, earthy green.

Lou leaned into Mac's strong embrace and just let herself go.

Dancing was deemed a success. Turned out, Louisa could do it just as good as any core girl, maybe even better; her lean muscled body was set apart by its inherent grace instead of its gathered scars and she found she kinda like that.

Even being out with the merc wasn't so bad. He kept her pretty entertained, cracking a mess of stupid jokes and managing to coax a record number of reluctant smiles out of the pilot. She had to admit she was having a good time with Mac, and that he wasn't half-bad lookin' without that stupid beard; he had rough, strong features, a slightly crooked nose showing evidence of its many breaks--only one of which Lou knew herself to be responsible for--and a big dopey smile that a person couldn't help smiling right back at.

Near the end of the night--the early hours of the next morning, really--when the club was near empty, Louie and Mac were sitting side-by-side in a quiet booth in the corner. Louie was eating the booze-soaked fruit out of Mac's girlie drinks, having actually developed a taste for the treat, and she was _laughing_.

"_Tsai boo shr_! They were not!" She declared incredulously, popping a little wedge of tangy plum into her smiling mouth.

"It's true!" Mac claimed, pleased with himself and in utter awe of the smile on _Serenity_'s cranky pilot, "They were jugglin' goslings! I saw it with my own two eyes!"

"My mama used to tell me a story about my daddy visiting a world where they juggled goslings," Louisa reported, gaze momentarily glassy and far-off, "I thought she'd just made it up... it was such a great story..."

The two fell into a companionable silence, broken only when Mac carefully reached out to brush the mass of tight curls off Lou's slim bronze shoulders. "What are you doin'?" The young woman asked quietly, feeling naked under the merc's intense stare but not all that uncomfortable anymore.

Mac glanced up, leaning closer as he grinned and reported, "Checkin' for feathers, _bao bei_. Just checkin' for feathers."

Briefly, Lou wondered who'd gone and sucked all the oxygen off the whole gorram planet; her breath caught in her throat, her hands went sweaty, and Mac was lacing his broad fingers into her hair. She put a hand on his solid chest, almost pushing him away but somehow only managing to grab his tacky shirt and yank him closer.

There was a clash of lips and teeth and tongues, a scramble of limbs as Lou was either pulled or jumped to straddle Mac's lap--they never could agree on which. It was like a tiny spark setting off a violent combustion of fuel and fire and heat and there wasn't nothin' no one could do to stop it.

The owner of the establishment was cursing up a storm when he finally came to throw the groping, giggling couple of kids out into the rising morning light.

Uncle Mal was up when they made it back to _Serenity_; he hadn't gone to bed. The aging captain was half expecting Lou to come back alone and coolly report how she'd murdered and disposed of the cocky blonde merc. He was even ready to leave the world if she had; Mal would gladly harbor Zoe's baby no matter what crimes she committed.

He was real surprised when Louisa and Mac came stumbling back together after sunrise, laughing and kissing and hanging off each other and... "Oh, gorram it!! Both 'a ya get yer hands where I can see 'em!!"

Reluctantly breaking a lip-lock, Louie turned and giggled up at her Uncle Mal. He hadn't heard her giggle like that since... well, since before the war, maybe even since before her mama died. Hearing it from the fiery young pilot was almost worth tolerating the smart-mouthed young merc touching her like he was.

"Sure thing, Uncle Mal," Lou chirped with a smile and a salute, grabbing Mac by one of his belt loops and dragging him along behind her, "We'll be in my bunk."

Mal changed his mind.

xxxxxxxxxx

Translations -

ai ya - damn

wei - hey

bao bei - sweetheart

run-tse de shang-dee - merciful god

hwoon dahn - son of a bitch

bu-yao-lian de dong-xi - you're shameless and less than human (lit. you are a thing that has no shame)

cao ni zu-zhong shi-ba dai - fuck your ancestors to the eighteenth generation

wang-ba dahn - bastard (lit. turtle egg; turtle is said to be an insult since it does not know its father)

chou-bi - stinking cunt

ben dahn - dummy/fool

wo de ma huh tah duh fong kwong duh wai shung - holy mother of god and all her crazy nephews

dong ma - understand

gou-zai-zi - son of a dog

ching-wah tsao duh liou mahng - frog-humping son of a bitch

bun tyen-shung duh ee-dwa-ro - stupid inbred sack of meat

jen duh shi tyen tsai - an absolute genius

mei-mei - little sister

lan-dan jiang - weak-ass sauce (referring to a weak drink)

tsai boo shr - no way


	4. Part 4: What I Got

Part 4 - What I Got

Retired United Republic of Independent Worlds Air Force First Lieutenant Louisa Agnes Serenity Washburne hated getting mail. She didn't get much, but the little she got was almost never good: death notifications of former members of her squadron, pleas from the Republic for her to re-enlist, and the odd death threat from annoying, cowardly former Alliance _go-se_.

So Louisa knew that she was in for it when, four days after her twenty-third birthday, Mac approached her after a mail pick-up with a small, neatly wrapped package in his hands and asked, "Who's Danny Wei?"

"An old friend from Persephone," The young pilot told her boyfriend of nearly a year as she snatched the box from him and tucked it inside the pocket of her old brown coat, "Haven't seen him since we got patched up in the same hospital on Greenleaf during the war."

"Oh," Mac responded brightly, the stocky blonde merc slinging an arm around Louie's waist as he prodded, "Well, ain't you gonna open it?"

Already pretty sure of what the package contained, Louisa led the way through the crowded space station and responded, "Later."

Mac frowned in confusion. "But what if it's somethin' needs to be opened_ right now_?" He argued, intense curiosity quite transparent, "Like food, or a puppy, or a bomb?"

With a smirk, Lou gave his hip a pat and soothed, "Boyfriend, ain't nobody in the 'Verse dumb enough to mail anything perishable, least of all a poor puppy, and if you suspect it to be a bomb, shouldn't you be tryin' to talk me _out_ of openin' it?"

"Right," He replied, pale, clean-shaved face turning the slightest bit pink before he reached into Lou's pocket and joked seriously, "I suspect it to be a bomb. Best let me take care of it for ya."

"You're gonna lose that gorram hand!!" Lou cried, cursing that Mac knew just the right way to move her to exploit the old war injury to her left leg and prevent her from being able to jump out of his grasp. The merc gave a triumphant crow, bouncing away with the package held high up over his head of girly blonde curls.

"Come on, gosling," Mac smiled nervously, suddenly finding himself cornered after quite a bit of the run-and-chase game, not liking how Louisa's hand was resting on the butt of the pistol strapped to her hip and how he was getting the distinct feeling that he might've gone a bit too far, "Packages are meant to be opened!"

"Don't think I won't have you arrested if you open my mail!" Lou snarled, trying hard to resist pulling out her gun in the middle of the crowded space station, "Boyfriend or not, mail tamperin' is still a gorram felony! Gimmee that package!"

"Only if I get to see what's inside," The merc stated, smiling one of his infuriatingly innocent and happy smiles across at his enraged and gorgeous woman, "Otherwise I guess all our sexin' from now on is gonna have to be done during conjugal visits and I'm game for that if you are."

Louisa glared, hating the fact that Mac's quirky grin made her just want to give him whatever he wanted. "I don't take kindly to bein' blackmailed," She hissed, flipping the safety off on her gun, "What makes you think I won't just shoot you and skip all the inconvenience?"

"'Cuz I'm handsome and charming and make you scream my name on a nightly basis?" Mac suggested brightly. He paled when the comment did not have the desired effect, gulping as he added, "And 'cuz captain would be mad at you?"

"He'd get over it," The pilot replied, locking eyes with her boyfriend as the pair of them descended into a silent standoff. Her fingers twitched around her gun just as Mac's twitched around the plain brown package.

And then the merc put the slightest rip in the paper and all hell broke loose. Louisa growled, full on tackling Mac backwards into the floor. As they wrestled and shouted in a rather juvenile and embarrassing manner, the disputed package ended up sliding right the feet of _Serenity_'s resident Double-Trouble.

"_Dear Lou_," James Reynolds read aloud, the irksome brunette giggling while his slightly shorter twin rooted through the thick packing foam inside the small box, "_I hope all is still well on your adventures and that you haven't gotten shot recently. If you have, then I hope it wasn't nothing but a scratch and that you heal up real nice_."

"Jay, you put that down!!" Louisa shrieked, vowing to maim her pair of seventeen-year-old cousins as soon as she managed to get untangled from her boyfriend. Mac was deceivingly strong and they had each other pinned quite thoroughly.

With a disturbing cackle, Jay continued, "_Things are mostly the same here. Real quiet since you haven't visited in so long. See to that, will ya? Say hi to Rosie for me and the both of you should enjoy the birthday presents I sent. Yours, Danny_."

"Aw," Sam mocked, carefully holding an ornate glass butterfly and tiger up to the light, "Well ain't these just the most thoughtful, useless pieces of frippery you've ever seen?"

"Your birthday's comin' up?" Mac gaped excitedly, voice a little small as he struggled to breathe past his girlfriend's tight headlock, "That's great, _bao bei_! When is it? I call in charge of the spankings!"

Wrinkling his daddy's nose and brushing dark fringe out of his blue eyes, Sam commented, "For the sake of my sanity, I'm gonna pretend I didn't hear that."

"Get the hell offa me!" Louisa screamed, managing to lock her legs around Mac's thick torso and roll, slamming him hard into the ground. She jumped off the breathless merc, stalking straight for the now terrified Reynolds twins, who easily surrendered the letter and presents. In quite a rage, she then stormed off in the direction of the ship.

"Here you go, Rosie," Lou stated, faking happiness as she presented the little twelve-year-old with her delicate purple butterfly, "Danny says happy birthday."

"Ooo," Rose-Ellen Tam cooed, brown eyes wide as she stared dreamily at the new treasure, barely registering her big cousin ruffling her hair and dropping a kiss onto her head Louisa retreated to her own bunk and thoroughly locked the door.

About ten minutes later, Louie heard voices through the walls, muffled but coherent through thick metal. "What do you mean you _don't know_?" Mac asked incredulously, "How can you not know when her birthday is? She's practically your sister! You've known her your entire lives!"

"We just don't know, alright!" Jay snapped, rather annoyed if his furious retreating footsteps were any indication, "Quit askin'!! _Fei-fei de pi-yan_!!"

"He just feels bad," Sam remarked quietly, voice edged and defensive, "We both do. And you ain't makin' it any better rubbin' it in our faces."

"I ain't rubbin' anything in anybody's faces!" Mac claimed, sounding like he was starting to lose his temper, "I just wanna know when my girlfriend's gorram birthday is!!" He started pounding on Louisa's locked bunk door, shouting, "Louie, baby, come on out and talk to me!"

"You been upsettin' my pilot again?" Louisa heard Uncle Mal demand as he made his inevitable intrusion, "Thought we talked about this. She generally seems to have trouble flyin' when she's locked in her bunk, _dong ma_?"

"Cap'n, when's Lou's birthday?" Mac asked hopefully.

"August fifth," Mal instantly replied, making Louisa groan as she smashed a soft feather pillow down over her head, "Why?"

There was a brief pause and then... "Gorramit, Louie!!" Mac bellowed, savagely and repeatedly kicking the locked door, "That was four ruttin' days ago!! Why the hell didn't you tell me?"

"Hey now!" Uncle Mal shouted, sounding like he was man-handling the merc off down the hall, "I think that'll be enough abusin' my boat! Take Sam down to the cargo bay and see to securin' our stores!"

Mac grumbled but complied, and as soon as he was gone Uncle Mal cautiously tapped on the door. "Lou," He called flatly, "Need you to chart a course for Santo. We're pickin' up fifty head 'a cattle for Jayne on the way back to Haven."

"Alright," The young woman agreed, slowly climbing up out of her bunk. After checking that the coast was clear, she offered Uncle Mal a tight attempt at a smile and headed for the bridge.

The last leg of _Serenity_'s Supply Corps run was a bit tense. Louie and Mac were always at odds, but this was different. Usually, the merc would pester the pilot and she would bluster and yell and they'd eventually end up jumpin' all over each other. For two weeks, they did not speak; they did not even interact aside from occasionally kicking each other beneath the dinner table when Auntie Kaylee managed to force them to it at the same time.

"Just ain't right," Lou overheard Mac grumbling as they were all working to heard Uncle Jayne's cattle into the cargo bay. Her boyfriend talked to himself when he was annoyed, she'd learned, and wished she wasn't the cause of the rare occurrence. "Some ruttin' core boy knows my girl's birthday and I find out as a afterthought," The merc snarled, pale skin turning red and freckled in the intense sun, "Not right. Gorram crazy woman."

That night, unable to sleep because of the loud mooing, cold and lonely and being constantly reminded of just how hot her man looked shirtless and glistening in the sun as he'd effortlessly wrangled the beasts responsible for the noise, Louisa resolved herself to put an end to the fight. She got up out of bed, not bothering to dress before grabbing her capture and heading for Mac's bunk.

She knew his door would never be locked; sometimes, when she was ticked at him, she'd lock her door, but no matter how mad he was at her he never would. Mac was... he was wonderful.

He was awake, staring at the ceiling, and didn't react to her stealthy entrance. Trying to fight back nerves, Louisa took a seat on his bed, her back him as she thrust the capture in his general direction. Once again, his curiosity got the better of him and he took it within just seconds.

"That's my mama," Lou stated quietly, her eyes on her bare feet as she felt Mac shift to sit up, "Her name was Zoe and she used to be the first mate aboard _Serenity_."

"She's beautiful," The merc commented as his eyes stayed glued to an old home movie of Louie's mama carrying in the cake during her first birthday party. He earned a slight smile from his girlfriend as she tentatively glanced over her shoulder.

As quick as it was there, it was gone, Louisa looking away again and stating, "She died from a fever the week before my thirteenth birthday."

The pilot could almost feel Mac's already miserable expression fall even further.

Before he could say anything, Lou proclaimed, "I ain't celebrated my birthday since. Every year, Auntie Kaylee always asks real gentle-like if she can make me a cake and I always tell her I'd prefer if she didn't and that's the end of it. I'm sorry I didn't tell ya, but it wasn't anything purposeful. I wasn't tryin' to hurt your feelin's or nothin'... I been tryin' to get Danny to stop sendin' me presents ever since he read my birthday off my medical file while we was in the hospital together on Greenleaf. He's such a gorram stubborn son of a bitch. I don't know how his wife puts up with him."

Chuckling self-consciously, Mac took one last look at the statuesque woman in the capture before shutting it off and placing it carefully on his beside table. Ridiculous blonde hair standing on end, he swung his legs over the bed on either side of Louisa. Hugging her tightly to his shirtless, sunburn-warmed chest, the young man pressed his face into her tight red-gold curls and murmured, "Why didn't you just tell me that to begin with?"

"Don't like thinkin' on it," Lou answered, shivering and wishing she would have at least grabbed a pair of socks before heading out on this insane make-up mission, "I got real twisted up when Mama died... it hurt so gorram much and I kept holdin' it in and holdin' it in until it just... poured out one day. Felt better after, but I don't ever wanna go back to that. Thinkin' on her death makes me sad, but just rememberin' her in the good times ain't so bad. My birthday's hard 'cuz I can't separate it from her dying and that ain't nothing to celebrate."

Mac was quiet, breath hot against the pilot's neck as his arms enclosed her completely and his hands drifted over her torso, pushing beneath the thin t-shirt she wore. "I'm sorry," He said, fingers drawing small circles against Louisa's beautiful bronze skin, "I got jealous and... insecure, I guess. Shoulda known you had a reason for not tellin' me, but... I do want you to tell me this kinda stuff. I wanna know everything about you." He paused for a moment and Lou could feel his long, girly eyelashes flutter closed against her throat as he kissed along her rapid pulse.

"I love you," The merc ground out, his thick arms tightening around Louisa when she flinched. "You don't have to say it back if you're not ready," He soothed softly, calloused hands already seeking out well-mapped pleasure spots on the woman's body, "But... well, just somethin' to think about."

Barely able to breathe, Louisa let her head fall back against his shoulder. She opened her mouth, unsure of what would come out, but, before anything could, _Serenity_ suddenly pitched and shook around them. The pair were hurled violent to the floor; panicking and overwhelmed, Lou seized the well-timed excuse and immediately ran from the room, sprinting up to the bridge.

She was the first to arrive, Mac pouting not far behind. By the time Uncle Mal made his entrance, the pilot had already discovered the cause of their trouble. "_Wo-men wan-le_. It's Reavers," Louisa whispered, trying to keep up a brave face despite being completely terrified of the nightmare figures of her childhood.

"WHAT?" Mac squeaked, green eyes going wide, "This far in? Oh god! What do we do?"

"_Kwai chur hun-rien duh di fahng_," Lou replied, already steeling herself for some breakneck flying, "You best run and let everyone know to strap themselves down."

Not needing to be told twice, the merc scurried off and started banging on bunk doors. Louisa called after him, "And get Uncle Simon to dope those cows! We don't need a gorram stampede!"

"Think we can outrun 'em?" Uncle Mal asked, pale and disheveled from sleep as he buckled himself into the co-pilot's chair

"Not with the grappling hook they already got breachin' the hull on our starboard side," Lou growled, clearly incensed, "Gorramit!! Whose watch was it?"

"Worry about that later!" The captain ordered, barely short of a major meltdown, "Concentrate on gettin' us the hell outta here!!"

Louisa nodded, eyes fixed on the empty expanse of space out the front window. "Right," She stated resolutely, taking a deep breath before gunning the engines and taking off.

Lou zigzagged and rolled and feinted but nothing seemed to work in getting away from the Reavers; how could it when they had a sturdy cable piercing through _Serenity_'s hull? It was hopeless, like a fish who'd swallowed a hook trying to escape from the fisherman it belonged to. They were gonna get caught and gutted and boned and made into trophies and Louisa couldn't stop thinking that it would be all her fault; she was about to fail her family just like she failed her squadron.

Uncle Mal was swearing and gasping and constantly reminding his pilot that _Serenity_ was a mid-bulk cargo transport, not the sleek bomber she flew for the Independents. "_Wo de ma_, Lou!" He gasped after one particularly death-defying feint towards an asteroid that had proven not good enough in throwing the Reavers, "This boat's got a couple hundred tons on that little toy you flew in the war!! Ain't gonna be nothin' left for the Reavers if you keep tryin' crazy shit like that!"

"_Bizui_!!" Louisa ordered, full concentration on the task at hand. She was staring to get pretty annoyed with her uncle; she knew a lot better than he did what _Serenity_ was and was not capable of and didn't appreciate the captain calling her vessel a clumsy fatty ('cuz that's what she took his comments to mean).

But then she got an idea; maybe those extra couple tons would be just what they needed. With a wicked smirk, she yanked back on the steering yoke as hard as she could.

_Serenity_ careened up and backwards, looping high over the Reaver ship and giving a clear view of the top of it. The vessel was just as Louisa heard her mama describe on Qilin all those years ago: painted red with gore, chained all over with scorched skeletons, and leaking a long trail of toxic radiation. Lou suddenly felt like she was falling out of the gum tree again.

And then the cable attached to the hooked spear penetrating the ship was pulled taut, groaning and twanging and making _Serenity_ creak with strain before Louie fired the engine to full burn and shot straight down, straight down through the radiation tail. The cable snapped, but not before spinning the Reaver ship into an out-of-control barrel roll, like a little wooden ripcord top. Louisa hauled ass outta there, her speed break-neck and her path erratic as she constantly checked the radar for signs of anymore trouble.

"I think I'm gonna be sick," Uncle Mal groaned, eyes squeezed tight shut and face tinged green, "That move was downright nauseatin'... we in the clear?"

Nodding to herself as she continued to monitor her instrument panel, Lou answered, "Looks like it... they don't seem to be following..."

"Good," The captain declared, arthritic hands shaking and old body stiff as he unbuckled his seatbelt and struggled to his feet, "I'm gonna go check on everyone. Call me if they're comin' back."

"Ya," Lou absentmindedly agreed, "And we're gonna have to land to fix the breached hull before it gets anymore serious... Deadwood's closest." Mal gave a nod of approval and left.

Four hours and a bumpy, "oh god, oh god, we're all gonna die" crash-landing near-miss later, Louisa powered down the ship and rushed off towards the cargo bay. There she found forty-nine unconscious cows. The sight would have been comical if it hadn't been for the fiftieth one, the one with the broken leg and pregnant belly.

Most of the crew was gathered around it, Auntie Kaylee, Angie, Jessie, and Rosie all teary eyed, Uncle Simon and Ginny conferring quietly as they tried to splint the grotesquely contorted front limb; Mac was sitting on the filthy floor, holding the creature's head in his lap and trying to soothe its fear with gentle touches and soft murmurs.

Louisa felt sick; she walked right by the whole display, rushing to lose herself in _Serenity_'s repairs. Mal, Sam, and Jay quickly came to help her, the job of removing the Reaver grappling hook requiring all four of them. Even with all four on welding torches, they still couldn't work fast enough to mend the gash in the hull before darkness fell.

Uncle Simon delivered the calf about the same time, all the while whining about how he wasn't a vet; Mac named the little thing Rex and covered its eyes when Uncle Mal shot its mother. Really, that was the most humane thing to do, but that didn't stop Auntie Kaylee and the girls from crying when Uncle Mal and Louisa dragged it outside to butcher; just wouldn't do to waste perfectly good meat when there was folks out there starving.

Afterwards, with Mac still doting over Rex in the cargo bay, Lou went to shower, fiercely scouring the blood off her body before retreating to the bridge to attempt sleep. But that night on Deadwood seemed to stretch on and on. Louisa couldn't sleep but knew that she really needed to if she was going to be able to help finish the repairs and then pilot them off world in the morning. She palmed a few sedatives from the infirmary and went to her bunk. Out cold within minutes, she was visited by nightmares of war, of death, dying, Lazarus.

She'd been a real light sleeper ever since the war. During, it was all about survival, about being able to hear an enemy coming and snap herself into alertness as quickly as possible. After, it was about preserving her fragile mind, about being able to pull herself out of the nightmares.

Under the influence of a double dosage of sleeping pills, Lou couldn't fight her way out of the visions from her past; no matter how hard she struggled, her body continually felt like it was being sucked down into a deep mire of blood. In her dream, she was drowning; in her dream, she couldn't even scream.

She flew awake screaming, unable to get her eyes to focus on anything in the dark surrounding her; she was disoriented and utterly terrified and near mindless with that fear. It felt so real, like everything was happening all over again and she knew for certain she wouldn't live through a second time.

"Louie, baby!!" Mac yelped, starting out of sleep himself as his girlfriend thrashed and shrieked in the bed beside him. He threw his muscled arms around her, easily able to pin her drug-heavy limbs as he calmed, "Louie, relax! You're alright! I gotcha!"

"M-Mac?" The young woman whimpered, blue eyes dilated and wild as she slowly stilled. The moment the merc released her, she launched herself at him and clung frantically. Her breath came in desperate gasps as she bawled against his neck. He held her, confused and concerned.

"Baby?" He questioned softly, hugging the pilot close, petting her tight red-gold curls as her sobs slowly began to subside to hiccups and shudders, "What's wrong?"

"N-nothin'," Lou claimed, so very tired but afraid to give in to it, afraid of falling asleep and falling into another inescapable nightmare, "Bad dreams."

"Oh," Mac responded, kissing her temple and continuing to stroke her shaking back. Louisa was a strong woman and he loved that about her, but he also had to admit it felt good she trusted him enough to show weakness in front of, felt good she trusted him to be her protector on the rare occasions she actually needed one.

"Hey," Lou finally sniffled, looking a bit embarrassed as she sat up in bed and gazed blearily across at the shirtless blonde merc, "When'd you come in?"

He smiled, reaching out for her, fitting her slim body snug against his as he settled them down into the blankets. "Few hours ago," He answered, burying his face in Lou's thick, heavenly hair, "Jessie and Angie are watchin' Rex and I came down to talk to you, but you just looked so beautiful and peaceful that I couldn't bring myself to even try to wake you... hope you don't mind, sweet pea."

"Nah," Lou answered, the sedatives she regretted taking pulling hard on her eyelids, "Good you're here... thanks, boyfriend..." As she was drifting off, almost as an afterthought, she quietly added, "I love you, too."

Just before everything went black again, she felt Mac grin against her neck. His bright smile and his arms around her were enough to keep the nightmares away until morning.

The repair job went a lot faster with Mac and Auntie Kaylee helping, even if they were both taking near constant breaks to go and check on the shaky little calf being watched over by the Tam girls. Everything was ready for the crew to leave the world at a little before noon. Unfortunately, that's about the same time a small hovercraft came zipping towards them over the horizon.

Mac and Louisa both watched it with wary eyes, the pilot not looking away as she mentally ran over the present personnel. Uncle Mal and Sam had already gone in to see to the cattle; only Jay and Auntie Kaylee were left and neither of 'em would do a bit of good in a fight if they were about to get into one.

"Jay, take Auntie Kaylee inside and tell everyone to stay in there 'til I say," Lou ordered, cutting of the hotheaded youth's predictable protest with a curt, "Now."

By the time the old man and his five sons had stopped and jumped from their vehicle, _Serenity_ was locked up tight.

"Afternoon," Louie stated politely, her hands curled around the pistol strapped to her hip, "Something I can do for ya?"

The man in front looked older than a person would suspect he was, with balding black hair, squinting, wrinkled brown eyes, and a paunch-belly that hung over his worn belt. Chawin' on the hunk of tobacco between his jaws, he took a slow look around the clearing and stated, "Yup. You can tell me what ya'll are doin' here."

"We're with the Republic Supply Corps," Lou explained, not taking her eyes off of a single one of the armed men as she cocked her head back towards the scar on _Serenity_'s side, "We sustained some damage in route and set down to fix it. We were just about to get on our way."

The man and his sons got kinda quiet, casually trying to snoop about. Lou saw the tallest son, the one with the straw-hair and blurry tattoo on his wrist, get all excited when he suddenly heard the mooing from inside the ship and she discreetly took the safety off of her gun.

The boy of about twenty whispered to his dad and the old man nodded before pointing towards the abandoned Reaver hook off in the dirt a few feet away. "And you just plannin' on leavin' that garbage on our nice planet?"

"All due respect, sir," Louisa replied icily, already suspecting where he was going with the line of questioning, "That's a Reaver weapon and we don't want it on board."

"And we don't want it dumped in our home, neither," The old man replied, grinning a feral wolf kinda grin, "Me and my boys can help you stow it someplace safe until you find a trash heap to leave it on."

"No thanks," Louisa stated, not liking how the sons were spreading out to surround her and Mac, "We don't got no room for it. If it bothers you that much, we'll be sure to send a Republic clean-up crew to haul it away as soon as possible."

"Now, why you gotta go and make things so difficult?" The old man taunted lightly, his hand casually brushing back the tail of his dusty green overcoat to reveal a pair of revolvers in his belt. His five sons made similar gestures. "Here we are tryin' to be all helpful and you just go 'n shit all over our kind offer," The man continued, nodding in turn to his circling sons, "That ain't right, doncha think, Ruddy?"

"Sure ain't, Pa," The straw-haired one answered, leering boldly at Louisa's backside and enjoying how Mac's murderous gaze had frozen on him, how the merc was neglecting to watch the rest of his brothers. "What s'matter with you?" Ruddy mocked, "You a retard or this _zazhong_ just got you whipped like a puppy?"

Lou could hear the grip of Mac's guns squeal as his hands tightened painfully around them. "You better watch your gorram mouth," He warned dangerously, not a hint of humor in his cold green eyes. She put a hand on his arm, sparing a brief, calming glance as she kept trying to keep all six of the intruders within her sight. There was a brunette strolling quietly around behind them and he had a weapon drawn. The situation was quickly spiraling out of control.

The old man gave a deceptively warm smile, chuckling, "Look, we're reasonable men and you seem to be a smart young lady. You gotta realize you're surrounded and outnumbered so why don't you and your fella there just throw down your guns and we'll do this real civil-like."

Stoic, Lou warned, "You're a whole helluva lot dumber than you look if you think a single one 'a ya'll is gettin' anywhere near that ship."

After a brief moment of tense silence, the men burst out laughing. Mac and Louie remained calm and cool, hands on their weapons as they just... waited.

"You are hi-larious, cutie-pie," The old man laughed, reaching for his guns, "Maybe I won't kill ya after all. Maybe you'll be makin' one 'a my boys a real fine wife. Whadaya say, Rud-" His revolvers never made it out of the holsters, the barrels catching as his hands jerked forward prematurely, his eyes wide and helpless as he watched the lithe young woman draw and take aim at him with an unnatural kinda speed. Still, everything seemed so slow as the bullet came flying straight into the center of his forehead.

Mac shot the straw-haired son before the old man could even hit the ground, swift and efficient with the crippling gut shot. The kid screamed but the merc and pilot paid him no mind. They had his brothers to contend with.

"I'm hopin' real hard stupid don't run in your family," Lou stated flatly, eyes and guns on a pair of black-haired teens who looked to be twins as Mac watched the brunette and a frightened looking young blonde, "And that you'll listen when I tell you it would be best to throw down your weapons."

They all took a moment to look to their father, receiving the harsh reminder of his death from his sprawled body and the bloody hole in his forehead, from the tobacco spit dribbling out of his mouth; they looked to Ruddy next, the oldest, and found him just as useless, panting and bleeding in the dirt. The four boys threw their guns down at the tall woman's feet.

"Good," She congratulated, real sweet-like, "Now, you be on your way and we'll be on ours." They hesitated, prompting Lou to snap, "Git!"

They moved real fast after that, the black-haired twins gathering up their father's dead body as the blonde and brunette went for their straw-haired brother. He wasn't too happy.

Lou and Mac watched on edge as the sad little procession traveled away from them, they still had their guns drawn and were completely on edge.

It wasn't until the small hovercraft was started up and speeding away that they allowed themselves to relax, Louie holstering her pistols and stowing her small handgun back into a convenient pocket. She spared a slight sideways smile at Mac. He smirked at her warily before his eyes darted back to the retreating band of outlaws.

He saw Ruddy drawing one of his father's revolvers off of the man's dead body; he realized in an instant that the straw-haired son was taking aim at Louisa. Without a second thought, Mac shoved her down and put himself in line of the shot in the process.

Confused as to why she was suddenly falling to the dirt, Lou watched in horror as Mac's body bowed, as his chest made that all too familiar _POP-RIP-THUNK_ of a bullet passing through it. He toppled over like an ancient tree.

"NO!!" Louisa screamed, quickly scrambling over to him, hurriedly pressing down on the hole over his heart as she drew his dazed green eyes to her own panicked blue ones. "DON'T YOU DARE DIE!!" She ordered, not having even a fleeting thought of firing at their fleeing attackers, "STAY WITH ME, BABY!! UNCLE SIMON!!! HELP!!! MAC'S BEEN SHOT!!!"

"I-I got shot?" The merc grunted, clearly pained but surprisingly lucid as his broad hands came up to grope at his own chest, "Hurts like a bitch, but it don't feel like I got shot..."

"SIT STILL!!" Lou ordered, barely holding back tears as she turned towards _Serenity_ and screamed, "SOMEONE GET OUT HERE RIGHT NOW!!!"

"Wait," Mac groaned, trying unsuccessfully to pry his girlfriend's hands away from the hole in his loud paisley overshirt. He heard the ship's hatch opening and the crew rushing forward but he didn't think he was in need of medical attention... was he?

And Lou had tears in her big ole blue eyes again and he was feelin' worse about makin' her cry than about the bullet supposedly in his chest...

Wait a minute.

"Wait a minute," He ground out, finally managing to get Lou to stop pressing on his wound, groping his own pec to find that he wasn't bleeding but a trickle and didn't even have a hole in him. "Louie, baby," He comforted as he struggled to a sitting position, "I'm alright. I'm fine."

"You're not fine, you girly little shrimp!!" The pilot shrieked, the old insult that was now an endearment barely coherent past the tremble in her voice, "You just got shot! Why the hell did you push me outta the way?" She blinked at him, confused by him sittin' up like he was and... "Why ain't you bleedin'?" She demanded dumbly.

Shaking fine dust out of his messy blonde curls, Mac smirked and teased, "You sound disappointed, _bao bei_... pushed you outta the way 'cuz I love you and I ain't bleedin' 'cuz I don't got no fresh holes in me."

"How..." Louisa gaped, unable to help herself from reaching out to stick her fingers through the frayed hole in his shirt pocket. Mac winced but she didn't find a bullet hole.

Groaning as he shrugged off his overshirt and struggled to pull his undershirt over his head, Mac replied, "Dunno. Lucky, I guess." Chest bare, the merc looked down to find a deep purple bruise already beginning to form on his left pec. At the center of it was deep half-moon gash trickling just the tiniest bit of blood. He suddenly knew exactly what had saved him and couldn't help the blush and smirk that came across his face.

"Step out of the way, please," Uncle Simon ordered as he gently pushed Lou off to Mac's right side. Kneeling in the dirt on the merc's left, he was stunned by the severity--the lack of it--and odd shape of the gunshot wound. Frowning, the doctor fixed both young people with a stern look and demanded, "Are you _sure_ you got shot?"

"Pretty sure," Mac responded, green eyes nervous and flighty as he kept glancing between Louisa and his shirt, "That mean I'm gonna make it, doc?"

Simon rolled his eyes, snapping on a pair of gloves and wiping down the half-moon gouge with a tiny alcohol swab. "I think you'll live," He reassured.

"Good to hear," Mac remarked, grinning at Louisa, "Ain't that good to hear, gosling?"

Lou didn't answer; instead, she launched herself at him, tackling him back into the dirt as she half-shouted, half-sobbed, "Don't you ever scare me like that ever again or, so help me Buddha, I will kill you myself!! _Liou coe-shuy duh biao-tze huh hoe-tze duh ben ur-tze_!!"

Wincing, Mac beamed, wrapping his arms around the pilot as he bragged to the assembled crew, "She doesn't want me dead unless she's the one to kill me. That means love in Louisa-speak."

Inara smirked as she watched Simon try to carefully untangle his patient from his adoptive niece, agreeing, "We know."

"You are one lucky _hwoon dahn_," Uncle Mal remarked lightly, giving Mac's bruise a rather hard, painful poke, "That was a kill shot! By all accounts, I should be lookin' for a new merc right about now!"

"What'd you have in your pocket?" Sam questioned incredulously, he and his twin already nosily picking through Mac's discarded clothing.

"Hey!" The blonde cried, struggling in vain to fight his way out of Louisa's powerful grip, "Get away from there!"

It was already too late. Before anyone could stop him, Jay triumphantly produced a mangled lead bullet and a gold ring with a slightly squished spot on it. The crew all gasped as the blushing merc reached out to snatch both objects from Jay's frozen hand. Louisa didn't see 'em; her face was still pressed against her _live_ boyfriend's thick neck as she slowly calmed herself down.

"_Taikong suoyou de xingqiu saijin wo de pigu_," Uncle Mal swore half-heartedly, unable to force the fond grin off his old wrinkled face. He put Aunt Inara's arm through his own, leading the googly-yed former-Companion away from the young couple and motioning for the rest of the crew to follow. "Might as well start callin' my operation _the Love Boat_," He grumbled, willing down a lump from his throat as he thought about how proud Zoe and Wash woulda been of their baby girl

"Louie?" Mac questioned softly, all jittery as he watched the crew head back to the ship. He really coulda done without all the Tam girls cooin' at him like he was a fuzzy little forest creature with a big ole pink bow on his head as the doc tried to herd them all away, as well as Sam and Jay makin' sappy faces at him as the captain booted them off, too. Still, nothing seemed to really matter but the woman in his arms.

"Honey?" The stocky blonde asked, patting her back in a comforting manner, "Not that I ain't enjoyin' all this fussin', but I'm really fine. You don't gotta worry none."

"I know," Lou sniffed, squeezing him a little bit tighter, "Just gimmee a minute. It's not every day my boyfriend almost gets killed right in front of me."

Beaming, Mac patted her back again and soothed, "Alright, lamp chop. You go on ahead and take all the time you need 'cuz I got somethin' real important to ask afterwards."

"'Bout what?" The pilot inquired lazily, perfectly content to never move from her spot, "If you ruin this moment askin' for sex, I am gonna hurt you bad."

"Nothin' like that, sugar plum," Mac answered, nervous and trying to calm himself by peppering kisses all over Louie's long, graceful throat, "Just wonderin' what you're doin' for the rest of your life."

Bringing her head up, Louisa fixed him with a puzzled, vaguely irritated stare and inquired, "Huh?"

Smiling sheepishly, Mac held out the slightly squashed ring and offered, "Feel like spendin' it with me?"

For what seemed to be hours, Lou just gaped, her mouth hanging wide open and an expression of pure shock on her features. Mac squirmed uncomfortably.

"Now?" The pilot choked out, "You wanna ask me _now_? After you almost just _died_?"

"Couldn't think of any better time," He answered brightly, "Been carryin' this ring around in my pocket for awhile now and I reckon it savin' my life is some kinda sign... so whadaya say, baby?"

"Stupid, girly little shrimp," Lou murmured tearfully as she tackled the young merc back into the dirt, making him squeal in a rather unmanly fashion as she landed on his large, throbbing, tender bruise, "That was such a ruttin' lame proposal! 'Course I'll marry you!"

Fighting back pained and joyful tears at the same time, Mac groaned, "_Awesome_, but could we save the you jumpin' me part for later? I'm feelin' a bit woozy from, you know, stoppin' a bullet with my chest."

Louisa just laughed, shaking her head as she helped Mac to his feet and back to _Serenity_.

The crew made arrived on Haven in the middle of September.

Rex was the best man at the wedding.

xxxxxxxxxx

Translations -

go-se - crap

fei-fei de pi-yan - baboon's asscrack

dong ma - understand

wo-men wan-le - we're in trouble

kwai chur hun-rien duh di fahng - go far away very fast

wo de ma - mother of god

bizui - shut up

zazhong - crossbreed (racial slur)

liou coe-shuy duh biao-tze huh hoe-tze duh ben ur-tze - stupid son of a drooling whore and a monkey

hwoon dahn - son of a bitch

taikong suoyou de xingqiu saijin wo de pigu - stuff all the planets in the universe up my butt


	5. Part 5: Epilogue

Part 5 - Epilogue

Retired United Republic of Independent Worlds Air Force First Lieutenant Louisa Agnes Serenity Washburne-Machado hated her name.

But not just her name, that long ass stream of words she still muddled up even after a little over three years of having the whole thing as her own. No, she hated all names and especially the ones in the heap of baby naming books she'd been receiving from Auntie Kaylee, Aunt Inara, Aunt River, Uncle Jayne (strangely enough), and even that stubborn _hwoon dahn_ Danny Wei ever since five months ago when what she thought was a stomach flu turned out to be a ruttin' kid growin' inside her.

Sitting on the bridge as she waited for her husband to return from the latest supply run he'd gone on with Uncle Mal and the newly-turned twenty Reynolds twins (their daddy was nearing sixty and was groomin' 'em to take over _Serenity_ so he could retire with his beautiful wife), Lou found herself yet again just glaring hotly into yet another page of gorram stupid names.

Her son would not be called Angus, Alf, Algy, or Anis, nor Grosvenor, Guernsey, or Grenville, Kiyiyah, Klah, Kong, or Koopnee, Manville, Marmaduke, or Mellon. Seemed like every book was filled up with all these useless, ridiculous names and if she didn't come across a halfway decent one soon she was gonna up and lose it. That one perfect name was out there and, gorramit, she was gonna find it.

This was important. This was her son and she was gonna do right by him no matter what.

If she got desperate, she supposed she could go try to get some help from the Tam girls, eighteen-year-old Jessie, bright and beautiful even when covered head to toe in engine grease, seventeen-year-old Angie, sweet and lovable and cute as a button, fifteen-year-old Rosie, dreamy and imaginative and wide-eyed, and thirteen-year-old Ginny, dark and speculative and destined to follow in her daddy's footsteps as a healer. Hell, the dark-eyed, unnaturally perceptive six-year-old Cobb twins, Alleyne and Jayne Jr. might even have some ideas. She made a mental note to wave them back on Haven later.

"Still at it, baby?" Mac cooed, sliding silently into the room and surprising her with a big bunch of fragrant wild flowers; they clashed horribly with his loud paisley shirt. He grinned as he held them out to her, watching her beautiful scowl split into a beautiful grin.

"Ya," Louisa answered, taking the flowers from her husband and giving them a deep whiff, smirking when she felt the kid immediately start stompin' on her kidneys. "Your boy says hi," She teased fondly.

The stocky, blonde-haired merc beamed happily, bending down to plant a big ole kiss on his wife's luscious lips as he let his hand drop to skin her gorgeously protruding stomach. "He's feisty," Mac observed, "Just like his mama."

Louie laughed as she gave him a light shove... well, what she thought was a light shove that ended up sending him sprawling theatrically backwards and into the co-pilot's chair. The woman shook her head of tight red-gold curls at his antics, hugging her midsection as she announced, "He's also a twitchy and annoying, just like his daddy."

Grinning, Mac stood up again, crossing the small space to kneel down in front of his wife. He picked up on of the old plastic dinosaurs sitting on _Serenity_'s console, the t-rex. He made it walk carefully across her reclining stomach as he gazed up at her through long blonde eyelashes and stated, "I thought of a name you might like."

"Oh really?" Louie challenged, arching an eyebrow and just daring him to once again suggest Odin Jr. That fight had lasted weeks, ending in a final tweny-four hours of her constantly referring to the baby as Odor Jr.

"Yup," Mac reported proudly, gently pushing up Louie's shirt and giving Albert the t-rex a smooth expanse of stunning bronze skin to walk along. Mac bent down to give his wife's ticklish bellybutton a light kiss before announcing, "I think our son should be named Washburne Malcolm Machado."

Suddenly breathless, her vision blurring from hormone and adorable merc induced tears, Louisa carded her fingers through Mac's blonde curls and announced, "I love it."

xxxxxxxxxx

Translation -

hwoon dahn - son of a bitch


End file.
